Concerted Effort Will Be Needed To Repeal
Federal Mandatory Train Whistle Law
By State Representative Cal Skinner

Remember when trains throughout Illinois started blowing their horns at every grade crossing in summer of 1988?

You might not, because municipalities in DuPage and McHenry Counties and, perhaps, elsewhere went to court immediately seeking injunctions against them. They succeeded and suburban residents again could sleep through the night.

The Illinois Commerce Commission became the hero of the year by finding a way to return things to the way they were before the General Assembly changed two words in the cause of traffic safety.

The federal government is about to re-create that 1988 trauma caused by the Illinois legislature. Horns are coming as a result of a part of 1994's High-Speed Rail Act. Specifically, the law's (naturally) unfunded mandate reads, "The Secretary of Transportation shall prescribe regulations requiring that a locomotive horn shall be sounded while each train is approaching and entering upon each public highway-rail grade crossing."

There are exceptions, but there are very few grade crossings in Illinois that qualify.

Please consider this a call to action. My hope is that every municipality near a railroad track that cares about quiet nights will contact its U.S. Congressman and Senators. Suggest to the U.S. House members that "Corrections Day" procedures be used to give authority back to each state to govern horns at grade crossings. ("Corrections Day" was just used by my Congressman Don Manzullo to make permissive the mandatory car-pooling part of the 1990 Clean Air Act.)

None of us want our phones to be ringing off the hook in the wee hours on the day in late November, 1996, when the mandatory horn blowing starts. •

Page 22 / Illinois Municipal Review / October 1995