New Quiet Zone in Downtown Palestine

Last October, Palestine, Texas, got a little quieter. The railroad Quiet Zone was implemented to help reduce noise caused by the Union Pacific Railroad. After sending a letter to the railroad and the Federal Railroad Administration, the zone was established to improve the quality of life for residents of Palestine. To ensure compliance, signs have been posted at two downtown crossings - South Magnolia and South Sycamore streets.

“The implementation of a quiet zone has been a long process for many years,” Public Works Director Tim Perry said. “The first times that the city tried to request implementing a quiet zone the equipment to meet federal standards were not in place and the cost of upgrading them was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Years later when the request to re-evaluate the implementation was requested our investigations found that all the older monitoring equipment, and signal arms had been updated to the current standard to accommodate the implementation of a quiet zone.

“We first and foremost want to make this implementation as safe to our residents as possible, but still want to enhance the quality of life as much as possible with the implementation of the quiet zone.”