Researchers say preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere - maybe above and beyond airplane's carbon emissions.
(Photo courtesy of NOAA)
It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:
Transcript
It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:
Mark Jacobson studies atmospheric science at Stanford University.
He’s just finished research on airplane emissions, including contrails. Those’re the streaming vapor clouds you see coming out of high-flying airplanes.
Jacobson wants to see if contrails contribute to global warming.
“And we’re trying to find out what’s the relative contribution of aircraft to that warming.”
Jacobson says preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere – maybe above and beyond airplane’s carbon emissions.
He says his upcoming paper will likely stir a lot of debate next year, since flying’s becoming more common and there hasn’t been much research on its impact yet.
Airport Operations Manager Todd Laps uses pyrotechnics - and sometimes just plain old honking the car horn - to harass birds and keep them away from the airport. (Photo by Julie Grant)
The Akron Canton Airport cut 40 acres of trees to make the runway area less attractive to wildlife. (Photo by Julie Grant)
If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:
Transcript
If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:
Todd Laps probably never envisioned that he’d spend his days harassing
birds. He’s operations manager at the Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio.
(sound of a plane landing)
But for the past few years, he’s started doing everything he can to keep
birds off the runway.
(sound of a horn)
Sometimes he just chases them in a truck while honking the horn.
“If you chase them around enough, they get tired of it, and they leave.
But you may have to drive around blowing the horn for five minutes to get
them to leave.”
(sound of a horn)
It’s not that Laps hates birds. He’s actually trying to save them –
from getting sucked into plane engines. That’s pretty bad for the birds.
It can also damage the planes.
The Federal Aviation Administration says bird strikes have killed more than
200 people worldwide since 1988 – and cost the U.S. aviation industry
hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ever since geese took out both engines in US Airways flight 1549 earlier
this year – leading to that dramatic flight into the Hudson River –
more airports are paying attention to the surrounding wildlife.
Mike Begier is national coordinator of the Airport Wildlife Hazards Program
with the US Department of Agriculture.
He says populations of larger birds – such as geese – are increasing. At
the same time, there are more planes in the air then there used to be.
“So we’re competing for the same airspace. So it’s a probability.
The more times you fly, the more chances you have to strike something.”
Begier says most airports were built a little outside of the city, in
green, wet areas. And those places attract lots of birds and animals.
“Birds may want to stop over there and rest. Airports that do not have
adequate fencing wind up being a refuge for deer or coyote.”
At the Akron airport, they’ve recently cut down 40 acres of trees to make
the area less attractive to wildlife. They’ve also started mowing more
to discourage bugs. Without bugs, there are fewer small mammals and birds.
The folks in Akron think it’s made a difference reducing the number of
accidents.
Airports are not required to report wildlife strikes. Some do voluntarily.
When the FAA opened up its records on collisions between planes and birds
and coyotes and even alligators this year, it looked like the number of
accidents was on the rise at some airports.
But Begier says those numbers don’t provide an accurate picture.
Airports don’t have to report them, so as many as 80% of strikes still go
unreported.
“So when we see these high numbers of strikes, it’s important to
realize that the airports are actually being proactive, that they’re
reporting their strikes – which is a very good thing.”
Begier gives the example of JFK airport in New York. It’s in the top ten
airports nationwide reporting the most wildlife strikes. That sounds bad.
But because JFK voluntarily reported accidents, biologists were able to
figure out part of its problem. When the nearby bayberry bushes were ripe,
they were attracting lots of birds. By removing the bushes, they reduced
the number of accidents.
Researchers are also experimenting with higher tech solutions at airports.
They’re trying laser lights to harass birds away from hangars, using
small radar units to track birds and warn planes of approaching danger, and
using pulsating lights on planes to mimic bird predators.
But for USDA wildlife biologist Rebecca Mihalco, the old fashioned methods
are the most rewarding – at least today. She works at the
Cleveland-Hopkins airport and just caught a red-tailed hawk.
“I’m always excited when I catch a hawk. I guess I’m a kid that
way.”
Mihalco drove the hawk far away from the airport and released it.
But to avoid so many accidents with wildlife, airports will have to do
better than catching them one at a time or chasing after birds and honking
at them.
Bassam Jody of Argonne National Laboratory
is helping develop novel ways of sorting and cleaning
shredder residue left over from cars, construction debris,
and major household appliances.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Auto shredder residue is a mish-mash of metal, foam and
plastics that get ejected from car shredders.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Argonne researchers hope to make the
process affordable for the scrap industry. They're perfecting
machines that separate plastics and other materials by
density and their proclivity to sink or float in the presence
of foamy bubbles.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
We’ve all heard over and over again
about that government program ‘Cash
for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers
thinking about what exactly happens
to dead cars, regardless of how they
die. Shawn Allee looks at
how car recycling works and who’s
trying to improve it:
Transcript
We’ve all heard over and over again about that government program ‘Cash for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers thinking about what exactly happens to dead cars, regardless of how they die. Shawn Allee looks at how car recycling works and who’s trying to improve it:
You might not think about it this way, but your car just might be the biggest thing you own that gets recycled.
I mean, someday you’re going to junk it, or maybe some future owner will. Anyway, I’m out in front of a car shop in my neighborhood, and with the health of cars in mind, I thought I’d ask some people around here, percentage-wise, just how much of a junked car gets recycled?
“I would say maybe, like, 5% of the car.”
“I’ll say, 20% – 30% probably, of a car.”
“I guess the recycled one could be 30% of the car.”
“I guess, like, 50%.”
“About 70%.”
++
In my little unscientific survey here, it turns out that most people are giving a pretty low estimate of how much of a junked car ends up being recycled.
The auto industry and the federal environmental protection agency say about 80% of the junked car gets recycled. The rest heads to landfills. That sounds pretty good, but that means we bury about five million tons of junked car pieces each year.
To understand why they can’t recycle even more of the car, I’m going to talk with Jim Watson.
He runs ABC Auto Wreckers in a suburb just south of Chicago.
“We don’t want to landfill anything. The objective is to take the vehicle, process it and have all the parts be used.”
Watson shows me his shop where he pulls parts for the used market. A dozen workers lift hoods, twist tires, and pull out stuff I don’t even recognize. It’s like an assembly line in reverse.
“They do an analysis and inventory each of the parts of the car that have a probability of sale and then they harvest or pull those parts off the car.”
Watson and some of the bigger auto wreckers have parts-scrapping down to a science, but it’s expensive to keep pulling parts and keep space open for scrap yards.
Eventually, Watson’s pulls off everything usefull and he’ll send it to a car shredder.
“A machine that beats it apart and shreds the car into small fist-sized or hand-sized components.”
Recyclers can pull out big shreds of steel and aluminum, but about 20% of the car is left-over. This shredder residue gets tossed into landfills. But scientists are thinking about how to recycle this shredded mess.
One works at a lab at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
“This is what shredder residue looks like.”
Dr. Bassam Jody reaches into a cardboard box and scoops a jumble of car seat foam, metal cable, wood, and shards of plastic.
Jody says shredder residue is a recycler’s nightmare.
“Maybe there are more than twenty different kinds of plastics. I tell you, plastics are generally incompatible, they don’t like each other and they don’t work together very well.”
Jody is developing machines to safely clean and separate all this stuff. It’s tough science.
Jody: “The more things you have in the mixture, the harder it is to separate. The trick is, you have to do it economically, and to produce materials that can be used in value-added products.”
Allee: “What can you make out of them?”
Jody: “Car parts. For example, this is a seating column cover.”
Jody says he gets a kick out of his work. He might just squeeze a bit more good out of our cars.
The scrap heap - what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:
Transcript
All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:
The steel from those clunkers from the “Cash for Clunkers” program will eventually be melted down and used again.
Bill Heenan is the President of the Steel Recycling Institute. He says it’ll be a few months before that scrap gets recycled.
“It takes some time for that old automobile, the clunker in this particular case, to work its way through the dismantling system and then through the shredding system and eventually to the steel mill.”
Scrap yards can remove things such as fenders or hubcaps for used parts, but what’s left – including the engines – goes to the shredder.
Bill Heenan says those 700,000 clunkers won’t mean a glut of scrap steel.
“Let’s say there’s a ton of steel in each one, you’ve got 700,000 tons. That seems like a lot. But in a given year, we recycle 80-million tons.”
That 80-million tons of scrap is melted down and becomes the bulk of new steel products in the U.S., including new cars.
Cars stacked up and waiting to be shredded at United Iron and Metal in Baltimore, MD. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
The scrap heap, what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
Engines in storage at All Foreign Auto Parts. This is the one piece of the car that absolutely can't be resold under the Cash for Clunkers program. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
The federal Cash for Clunkers
program kicked off this weekend,
and dealerships were pushing it
hard to sell new cars. The program
was created by Congress last month
to give a boost to the struggling
auto industry while helping the
environment. The idea is to get
older polluting cars off the road
for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report
on what will happen to all the
clunkers:
Transcript
The federal Cash for Clunkers program kicked off this weekend, and dealerships
were pushing it hard to sell new cars. The program was created by Congress last
month to give a boost to the struggling auto industry while helping the environment.
The idea is to get older polluting cars off the road for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report on what will happen to all the
clunkers:
Car dealers suddenly have a whole bunch of cars on their lots they have absolutely
no use for. The clunkers cannot be re-sold. That would defeat the whole green goal
of the program.
So all those old trucks and sagging sedans, they’re headed to places like M and M
Auto Parts in Stafford, Virginia. Most of us would call it a junk yard. But don’t tell
that to owner Rick Morrow.
“Long before green was popular, this kind of operation, even though a lot of people
said, ‘Oh junk yard.’ But they were actually recycling cars. They were making use of
what the component was built for in the first place.”
His company’s logo prominently features a large green recycling symbol.
“This is the dismantling area where after the cars come are inventoried and then take
them apart.”
Morrow’s business is all about re-use. A fender, or a tail light, or maybe an alternator
from this car will live to see another day in a car that needs a replacement part.
You’d think Morrow would be totally excited about Cash for Clunkers. But he’s not.
Because the one component from the clunkers that absolutely cannot be re-sold is
the engine – pretty much the most valuable thing in the car.
“If we do a few dozen cars and it looks like it’s costing us more money than it’s worth,
we’ll say, ‘sorry.’”
From an environmental perspective, it absolutely makes sense to prevent those
engines from ever polluting again. But, from a business perspective it’s a real
problem for the nation’s auto recyclers.
“It will make it extremely hard to make money on a car.”
Scotty Davis is the vice president of All Foreign Auto Parts in Fredericksburg
Virginia. He says it costs him $1800 in labor to take apart a car.
“It’s going to cost me money to do this. It’s one of these things. I have to bring the
car in. I have to get rid of the tires. I have to get rid of all the fluids, the freon,
process it – just to crush the vehicle.”
Davis specializes in newer foreign vehicles. Parts from a clunker won’t help stock
his shelves. But he feels like he has to take the cars to stay in the good graces of
the auto dealers he sells parts to.
“And I’ll be very honest with you. A couple of them I do a lot of business with, I said,
‘I will take your cars.’ And they said, ‘what are you going to do with them?’ I’m going
to crush ‘em. I mean they’re not of any value.”
(sound of a shredder yard)
Once all the usable parts are removed, and the toxic chemicals cleaned out, most
cars will end up at a scrap yard like United Iron and Metal in Baltimore.
“Right now you can see the tail end of a car coming on the conveyor belt down into
the shredder.”
“A tremendous amount of friction is going on as these hammers are pulverizing that
car into small pieces.”
Bruce Savage is with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries – a trade group. It
only takes 15 seconds, and when the shredder is done with a car, it isn’t even
recognizable.
“That big pile over there is the end result. It’s just a big pile of metal pieces.”
Savage says the metal is then sold. Whether scrap recyclers will cash in on Cash
for Clunkers all depends on the commodities prices for metal in the coming months.
“What was an old car can become a new car or can become a dishwasher or siding
for a home. It depends on the materials. But everything is being reused,
reprocessed and renewed.”
So maybe a 1989 suburban can be reborn as a 2010 Ford Focus Hybrid.
‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:
The goal is to clean up the environment and give sagging new car sales a boost.
‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.
At Varsity Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have been seeing if their clunkers qualify, and picking out a new car that they’ll finally be able to drive off the lot today.
Matt Stanford sells cars there. He says as far as he’s concerned, ‘cash for clunkers’ is already a success.
“We’re going to sell new cars. We’re going to get cars that don’t really need to be on the road off the road.”
The National Autobmobile Dealers Association says some dealerships have been holding off until they learned more about the rules of ‘cash for clunkers’ which were just cleared up last Friday.
The clunkers will be scrapped. The cash ends when the one-billion dollars in government money runs out.
A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:
Transcript
A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:
(tap tap tap of white cane)
Fred Wurtzel has excellent hearing but he can’t see.
He can tell by the echo from his white cane when he’s gotten to the edge of a building or the corner of a city block. And he knows cars by their engines.
(sound of car rumbling past)
“That car has a tweety bird under its hood, a loose belt or whatever it was. Now, there was a car going the other direction. (sound of truck going past) That’s probably a UPS truck.”
But he can’t hear hybrid cars – at least not until they’re right at his feet. That’s because the electric motor is very quiet. And when a hybrid comes to a stop, the engine shuts off.
“If you don’t know there’s a hybrid car there waiting, it may start turning and you may step into its path and not even be aware that there’s a car coming around.”
Wurtzel is president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. He says the blind community wants some sound added back into hybrid vehicles.
“’Course I grew up in the 60’s so a nice Mustang or something like that would be good (laughs)… just a sound that would let me know that the car’s accelerating or the car’s decelerating – whatever a normal vehicle would sound like.”
Well that’s one idea.
Patrick Nyeste has several ideas. He’s a researcher at North Carolina State University. He tried out 18 different sounds on his test subjects.
Everything from sirens (sound of siren)… to whistles (sound of whistle) … to engine sounds (sound of engine).
“I had a horn from a Beetle – so it’s, ‘meep meep,’ and I would just get giggles from that.”
But, he says to make a quiet car safer, the sound needs to be continuous – like a traditional car. That means some sounds can get annoying really fast.
(sound of continuous beeping)
Yeah that’s enough of that.
Nyeste says that engine noise we heard earlier was one of people’s favorites. They also liked white noise (sound of white noise), and the hum sound (sound of humming). He says that’s because we’re used to hearing those kinds of sounds when a car goes by.
He says a sound added to a hybrid also has to be loud enough to be heard above lawn mowers and garbage trucks.
“You want to make sure that the noise is heard, especially by the blind around corners, around objects, I mean some of these sounds can get masked and that’s important information to know where an object or a vehicle is.”
But some people are worried about adding sound to our cities and suburbs, they say they’re already so noisy.
Lotus Engineering says it has a solution for that. They added a four cylinder engine sound to a Toyota Prius. But the volume’s adjustable.
Colin Peachey is an engineer with Lotus.
“You could set the sound to be higher in certain circumstances or quieter in other circumstances. We could actually make the sound to be whatever level we fancied.”
And you don’t have to hear the sound inside the car.
There’s also a startup company in California – Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics. It’s designing a similar system for hybrids.
But it’s not clear how soon quiet cars might start making noise.
Spokespeople for Toyota and the Big Three say their companies are working on solutions. And some states and members of Congress have been talking about requiring hybrids to make some minimum level of sound.
Then, automakers will have to figure out exactly what a hybrid sounds like.
In the US, the market for biodiesel was more
than 450 million gallons in 2007. But new research shows
not all biofuels are created equal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports:
Transcript
In the US, the market for biodiesel was more
than 450 million gallons in 2007. But new research shows
not all biofuels are created equal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports:
The American Chemical Society study tested 19 biodiesel samples
from states like California, Massachusetts, and Indiana. It found the
majority, almost 90%, didn’t meet federal requirements for B20 grade
fuel – 20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum. Some samples
contained as little as 2% biodiesel, while others exceeded the
20% limit.
One of the study’s authors is Christopher Reddy. He says biodiesel
above 20% could damage engines, while anything below 20%
reduces the environmental benefits.
“So perhaps the results of my small study will help people take a step back and
reevaluate things and put in some safe guards and such.”
Reddy’s says his study shows the blending inconsistencies found by
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2004, still haven’t been
addressed.
For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.
Airplane manufacturers such as Boeing are working on improving the fuel efficiency of planes. But it might take some airline companies a while to upgrade their fleets.
(Photo courtesy of The Boeing Company)
Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening in the skies:
Transcript
Getting somewhere by airplane used to be a luxury. Now many of us
wouldn’t know life without it. As air travel gets more and more
popular, there’s been more concern about the environmental impacts of
our flying habits. Rebecca Williams takes a look at what’s happening
in the skies:
Air travel still takes a backseat to car travel as a way to get around.
But it’s growing by about 5 percent a year. There are more low cost
carriers these days, and plane tickets are cheaper, in real dollars,
than they used to be.
Airplanes have gotten a lot more efficient, but they’re not off the
hook, either. They burn fossil fuels, so they emit carbon dioxide.
CO2 is almost universally agreed to be the main culprit of global
warming.
Planes are responsible for about 3% of man-made CO2 emissions.
Compared to cars and coal-burning power plants, that looks like a
pretty small percentage.
But there’s something else unique to planes that has scientists
concerned.
Gidon Eshel is a climate scientist at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He
says planes also emit nitrous oxide and water vapor. That’s the
contrail you see. Both of those gasses can trap heat in Earth’s
atmosphere:
“The emissions associated with aviation are very important – roughly
twice as important as CO2 alone because they occur in such high reaches
of the atmosphere.”
Eshel says the effects of nitrous oxide and water vapor are stronger
than when they’re released near the ground.
There’s not much planes can do about flying so high up. But the
airline industry says it’s hard at work to make its planes more fuel
efficient.
Bill Glover directs environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial
Airplanes:
“The distance we could fly on a gallon of gas 50 years ago, we can now
do on less than a quart of gas. What we have ahead of us is more
improvements in materials, engines, aerodynamics, all of those are
going to contribute to fuel efficiency.”
Both Boeing and Airbus have unveiled shiny new planes that get more
miles to the gallon. So airlines should rush out and get the latest
models, right?
Well, it’s not that simple.
For starters, there’s the price tag: anywhere from about 14 million all
the way up to 300 million dollars.
Gueric Dechavanne is an airline industry analyst with OAGback Aviation
Solutions. He says it’s definitely in the airlines’ best interest to
upgrade their fleets. He says the cost of fuel has risen dramatically
over the past couple of years. But Dechavanne says even if airlines
can afford the newest model, it’ll be a long time before they can get
it:
“It’s not as easy as placing the order and getting the airplane today.
From the standpoint of the 787, the latest and greatest, 2014 or 2015
is the earliest delivery you can get it if you place an order today.”
Generally, the younger the airline company, the more fuel efficient
their fleet will be. Dechavanne says that means newer low cost
carriers such as JetBlue, Skybus and Spirit have the newest planes.
He says the so-called legacy airlines – such as Northwest and American
Airlines – have older fleets because they’ve been around for a while.
They have a much harder time upgrading their fleets. Dechavanne says
airlines don’t want to retire a plane before they’ve squeezed a full
life out of it:
“For the majority of U.S. carriers the fleet is still fairly young;
it’s tough for them to replace all of the inefficient airplanes just
because of the fact that fuel has gotten out of control.”
Dechavanne says, instead, some carriers are looking at less expensive
fixes – such as adding winglets to the plane to make it more
aerodynamic.
The experts have advice for travelers, too: Try to avoid connecting
flights.
Climate scientist Gidon Eshel says direct flights are better than
flights with several stops. And although it sounds counterintuitive,
it’s more efficient to take one really long flight a year than a bunch
of shorter flights.
That’s because airplanes have an ideal cruising height – about 30,000
feet up:
“To get there they need to climb a whole lot which makes short flights
relatively inefficient, sometimes very inefficient compared to long
flights.”
Another thing the experts recommend is lightening the load: pack light
and leave the hardcover books at home.
And as much as we all hate jam-packed planes, putting a lot of people
on one flight is actually better for the environment than having extra
legroom.
The sound of train horns is loud and makes your cover your ears.
Now, there is a different kind of horn, the wayside train horn, that could make all that sound a little less noisy. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Transportation)
The sound of a train blowing its horn is an unavoidable part of life in many communities. One town is taking steps to make trains a little less intrusive on the lives of people who live near the tracks. The GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports:
Transcript
The sound of a train blowing its horn is an unavoidable part of life in
many communities. One town is taking steps to make trains a little less
intrusive on the lives of people who live near the tracks. The GLRC’s
Chris Lehman reports:
About 80 freight trains roll through this crossing every day. They’re not
subtle.
(Sound of train horn)
That’s what a Union Pacific locomotive sounds like as it rolls through
this city in northern Illinois.
Now, here’s a different kind of train whistle:
(Sound of a wayside train horn)
That’s something called a wayside horn. The City of DeKalb is seeking
permission to install these horns at four of the seven street crossings
along the main Union Pacific east-west tracks through the city. The
other streets would have upgraded crossing gates. The goal would be to
eliminate the need for most engines to blow their horns as they pass
through town.
The wayside horns themselves aren’t much quieter than a regular train
horn. After all, they’re not supposed to be quiet. Cars and pedestrians
would still be warned about oncoming trains. The difference is that a
train sounds its horn as it approaches the crossing.
The wayside horn stays at the crossing. The theory is that a wayside
horn directs its sound down the street…it’s not the indiscriminate
blasting that interrupts people who live in houses that happen to be near
the tracks but nowhere near a crossing.
(Sound of walkie-talkie)
DeKalb City Engineer Joel Maurer recently set up a wayside horn and
walked through a residential neighborhood to test the theory. This is
what a wayside horn sounds like a block away from the tracks, but on the
same street as a crossing:
(Sound of wayside horn)
Now, this is what a wayside horn sounds like a block away from the
tracks, but on a street where there isn’t a crossing. You’ll have to listen
closely:
(Sound of walkie-talkie, then faint sound of horn)
If you’re having trouble hearing it…well, that’s kind of the point.
Now, here’s what a train horn sounds like at that same street corner:
(Sound of train horn)
The City’s tests found that in areas a block or more away from the tracks,
the wayside horns measured some ten decibels lower than train horns,
but the wayside horns won’t make a difference in just residential
communities.
Jennifer Groce is director of Main Street DeKalb, a downtown advocacy
organization. Her office is about a block from the tracks. She says she’s
looking forward to the switch to wayside horns…
“Any help to help deafen the sound a little bit is definitely an
improvement to what we have now. With 80 trains a day, it’s a huge
influence on our businesses. We talk with all different kinds of people
throughout the day, and you can hear us on our phones, you can hear that
train, all the time. It’s a great factor for us to be able to deafen it a
little bit. Especially for the residents that are down here and have to
hear it. A lot of times we can’t open our windows, you can’t
have your car window rolled down…so to be able to stand here freely
without having to plug your ears, is a very nice thing.”
It could be a while before Groce can unplug her ears, though. The City
has to get the wayside horn plan cleared by a web of state and Federal
agencies, but DeKalb does have precedence on its side. Wayside horns
have been installed in about 60 communities nationwide, with the highest
concentration in the Midwest. Some towns have banned train whistles
altogether. But new, stricter Federal regulations now make that all but
impossible in many locations. That might make the wayside horns ever
more popular.
Researchers say preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere - maybe above and beyond airplane's carbon emissions. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
