Board of Works moving Goshen street to make quiet zone possible

GOSHEN, Ind.- A half million dollar makeover is in the works toward a railroad quiet zone. A street in Goshen will be moved to make way for gate arms, which would effectively eliminate train horns in the area.

The city’s traffic engineer, Leslie Biek, says construction will begin next year, on 9th Street. The first step of making a neighborhood in Goshen a quiet zone will cost about $3,900.

“We hired a survey company to go out and to collect data,” says Biek. “We made improvements in 2015 to a bunch of crossings and so the crossings at College and Jefferson are the crossings going to improve.”

Biek adds the overall project is to get a quite zone on the railroad from 9th Street to Kercher Road, but for the crossing on 9th Street some things have to change.

“Because the road is right up against the crossing, we’re going to remove 5 feet on the east and then add 5 to the west,” says Biek.

The construction might cause a few proverbial bumps in the road, “Will potentially affect parking, we’re not anticipating needing any right of way.”

On Monday, the Board of Works agreed to a survey from Abonmarche Consultants for data that will be needed. Then, it’ll transform into a multi-government project.

“In this particular crossing it’s between Norfolk Southern, INDOT and the city, when we do the quiet zone, the federal rail association will be involved," says Biek.

By 2018, you will be able to see work being done on this crossing that's making its way to a quiet zone. “Norfolk Southern make the improvements to the crossings by adding the arms and signals and the city does the road work." 

Biek says the total of this crossing is about $540,000. 90 per cent of this will be covered by federal funds and 10 per cent is local city funding.