City and transportation officials celebrate Glendale quiet zone
In what’s amounted to a decadelong effort, the city of Glendale will now be just one of the three cities in Los Angeles County where trains along a section of railroad track will no longer be required to sound a warning horn except during extreme circumstances.
To celebrate, Glendale city and Metrolink officials held a press conference Wednesday morning. Mayor Paula Devine, Councilman Ara Najarian and Roubik Golanian, the city’s director of public works, all spoke briefly to around 30 people in attendance.
“Thanks to the continuous work by Glendale’s own public works department, collaboration with railroad authorities and the partnership with neighborhoods, I’m proud and pleased to announce the establishment of the first-ever quiet zone in Los Angeles on a Metrolink-served line,” Devine said.
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The quiet zone will start Saturday on a daily basis and covers almost a mile of railroad track along San Fernando Road at the Grandview Avenue, Sonora Avenue and Flower Street crossings. Trains will still sound their horns as a warning in case of a pedestrian or vehicle blocking the tracks.
The roughly 90 trains that cross along the San Fernando route are currently required to alert nearby drivers at the highway-grade crossings with the a series of loud horns every time they travel along the route.
This will no longer be the case thanks to a number of safety infrastructure projects now in place as required by the Federal Railroad Administration, which granted Glendale a quiet zone status earlier this month.
According to Golanian, $16 million in safety improvements were completed between 2008 and 2014. These included new and improved traffic-signal systems, gates, fences and railings. A final series of changes were made after a May 2015 diagnostic inspection — among them, warning lights called “backflashers.”
“These planned and measured focused improvements not only created a safer crossing at these three locations, but also automatically qualified them to apply for a quiet zone,” Golanian said.
Andrew Kotyuk, chair of the Metrolink board, and Art Leahy, Metrolink’s chief executive, also spoke at the press conference, noting the successful collaboration with city officials.
“Metrolink is a role model in safety,” Leahy said. “This is a great example of a partnership [at the] local, county, city level for leadership, but also nationally with our [Positive Train Control] program as well as a national model.”
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, the only other quiet zones in L.A. County are located in Pomona and the City of Industry.
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Jeff Landa, jeff.landa@latimes.com
Twitter: @JeffLanda
