Puyallup staff and consultants say city already meets quiet‑zone scoring; diagnostic meeting with BNSF next step

Puyallup City Council received results of a feasibility study showing the city’s downtown rail corridor is likely eligible for a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) quiet zone, and staff said the next step is a diagnostic meeting with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and other stakeholders to agree on modest crossing improvements.

The city hired PH Consulting to evaluate the corridor that parallels Stewart Avenue and Pioneer Way through downtown. Pablo Parra, a principal with PH Consulting, told the council the corridor includes seven public and one private crossing within the city and extends about 3.5 miles to the east end near Fifteenth Street Southeast. He said the FRA’s quiet‑zone risk calculator gives Puyallup a favorable score once existing one‑way street conversions are accounted for.

“The difference is, it will be, primarily the bells,” Parra said when describing what a quiet zone would sound like. He added that locomotives would retain authority to sound horns for safety concerns or equipment malfunctions.

Why it matters: residents along Stewart Avenue and nearby blocks have reported repeated train horn noise. A quiet zone would direct train engineers not to routinely sound horns within the defined half‑mile segments, changing the…