密歇根新闻广播 安静一会火车喇叭

Many Ann Arbor¹ residents wake up to an alarm clock they all share. It goes off at times they don't choose and can't predict, sometimes more than once before sunrise.

That alarm clock comes from horns on freight trains rolling slowly through the city.

"This is a horn that will bolt you straight out of your bed," said Dan Maier. Maier and his family have lived in Ann Arbor's Old West Side neighborhood since 2002. His house is a third of a mile from the tracks.

"It will have your heart racing," Maier said. "You will start to sweat because it comes so suddenly and such high decibels² that absolutely blows you out of your bed.

The horns sound even louder in Nancy Goldstein's home. Goldstein and her husband live in a large house with maroon³ clapboard siding built in the 1880s. They moved here in 1972. The tracks are right around the corner.

And we knew there was a train track, of course it's obvious, but there was just a bell at night," she said. "And there was flashing lights which of course don't bother you when you're asleep in your home. But in the mid-1990s, that changed.

I remember the night," she said. "We were sleeping with our windows open. It was a lovely summer evening with the breeze coming through and we both just sat bolt upright in bed and said, What is that? It really changed our lives.

The line runs from Toledo into the northern Lower Peninsula. Traffic varies by season, but according to the city, Ann Arbor averages one round-trip train per day.

In full disclosure, I live within earshot of the tracks, too, though farther away than Maier and Goldstein. I often hear a train very early in the morning, but I'm already up, on my way to the Michigan Radio studios.

To get the full effect, I decided⁴ to get a lot closer. On a recent weeknight, I parked my car in a lot near the tracks on the edge of Ann Arbor's downtown. Just after midnight a train rolled through. In two minutes, its horn sounded about 20 times.

Federal rules require engineers to sound their horns four times for a total of 15 to 20 seconds as they approach street-grade crossings without gates. Ann Arbor has 21 of those. Some of the downtown crossings are just a block apart. Every train's horn sounds more than 160 times round trip through the city.

There hadn't been any accidents in the city, but in 1994 Ann Arbor repealed⁵ an ordinance⁶ that barred train whistles, according to city Transportation Program Manager Eli Cooper. At about the same time, Congress was looking into the issue of train horns. Later that year, the city considered a plan to install gates and eliminate the horns again. Goldstein and others pushed for a quiet zone, but she remembers strong opposition⁷ from other residents.

They did not want to see the traffic change," Goldstein said. "They did not want to see the crossing arms come down. Safety didn't seem to be a problem at that time, but today it's very different. We have a lot of distracted driving. We have a lot more pedestrians⁸ we have more traffic.

Today's federal horn rules went into effect in 2005. Now, Ann Arbor is considering a new plan to apply for federal quiet zone status and has released a report on the options.

Just a basic signal improvement it is about $250,000 per crossing, said Cooper.

Going beyond basic gates can push it to $400,000 per crossing. The new report looks at 20 freight crossings. To change all of them would cost between about $7 and $8 million.

Price is one objection Cooper hears from residents. Another is that new residents should do their homework.

The types of things that we heard include that the train has been there for a century," Cooper said. "'They should have realized that it's not the taxpayers⁹' responsibility to fix something that they should have been aware of

The freight line operator Watco declined our interview requests. Ann Arbor's report does not include the passenger line used by Amtrak.

For months, Dan Maier has been urging his neighbors to share their opinions with city leaders. After years of interrupted sleep, he's tired of being tired.

I hope that the city doesn't continue to kick this down the road because it just gets more expensive to resolve, each subsequent year that they put this off, he said.

Ann Arbor is asking residents to take a survey about the choices in its report. The deadline is 5 p.m. on March 15.

1 arbor   

n.凉亭；树木

参考例句：

• They sat in the arbor and chatted over tea.他们坐在凉亭里，边喝茶边聊天。
• You may have heard of Arbor Day at school.你可能在学校里听过植树节。

2 decibels   

n.分贝( decibel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The typical lawn mower makes about 90 decibels of noise. 典型的割草机发出的声响约为90分贝。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A normal conversation reaches 55 decibels. 普通的谈话即可达55分贝。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 maroon   

v.困住，使（人）处于孤独无助之境；n.逃亡黑奴；孤立的人；酱紫色，褐红色；adj.酱紫色的，褐红色的

参考例句：

• Five couples were marooned in their caravans when the River Avon broke its banks.埃文河决堤的时候，有5对夫妇被困在了他们的房车里。
• Robinson Crusoe has been marooned on a desert island for 26 years.鲁滨逊在荒岛上被困了26年。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 repealed   

撤销，废除( repeal的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The Labour Party repealed the Act. 工党废除了那项法令。
• The legislature repealed the unpopular Rent Act. 立法机关废除了不得人心的租借法案。

6 ordinance   

n.法令；条令；条例

参考例句：

• The Ordinance of 1785 provided the first land grants for educational purposes.1785年法案为教育目的提供了第一批土地。
• The city passed an ordinance compelling all outdoor lighting to be switched off at 9.00 PM.该市通过一条法令强令晚上九点关闭一切室外照明。

7 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

8 pedestrians   

n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Several pedestrians had come to grief on the icy pavement. 几个行人在结冰的人行道上滑倒了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Pedestrians keep to the sidewalk [footpath]! 行人走便道。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

9 taxpayers   

纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Finance for education comes from taxpayers. 教育经费来自纳税人。
• She was declaiming against the waste of the taxpayers' money. 她慷慨陈词猛烈抨击对纳税人金钱的浪费。