VOORHEESVILLE — Even Charlie Brown was starting to lose hope. 

The village of Voorheesville has spent the last dozen years attempting to get a four-quadrant quiet-zone gate system installed at its Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue railroad crossings.

Installation of the system would mean engineers would not have to blow their horns as they approach and travel over the two crossings, which at last count saw about 15 trips a day, because the quad gates are designed to block all lanes of traffic on both sides of the track.

Since Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue are county roads, Albany County is the project’s official applicant, but it hasn’t had much luck getting someone at the state to sign off on the $340,000 allocation, which has been in place for years. 

“We believe we’ve gotten over the funding hump,” Mayor Rich Straut said during an Aug. 14 board of trustees workshop. 

There had been several meetings with staffers from state Senator Neil Breslin’s office, Straut said. “We met with DASNY several times,” he said of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York.

Straut said village attorney Rich Reilly “went back … did the research,” and found a way for the village to obtain the funding. 

The village by way of the county was trying to access a State and Municipal Facilities Program (SAM) grant for the Quiet Zone, but the Dormitory Authority, which administers the grant, raised concerns about using funds for a project that won’t be owned by a local government entity; CSX typically owns the gates and charges municipalities to install and maintain the system. 

There have been multiple attempts made over the years to answer the ownership question posed by the Dormitory Authority. 

Straut said in September 2021 that CSX “seemed agreeable” to the county owning the gates and the freight company maintaining them, but nothing had been formalized. The mayor then said there had been a verbal agreement between CSX and Albany County that the county would own the gate system on CSX’s track by way of a permanent easement. 

Then, there was the thought that some kind of long-term lease between the county and CSX would satisfy the ownership stipulation but that didn’t satisfy the Dormitory Authority either. 

Finally, the village in a December 2023 letter to Breslin argued that the ownership provision was overly restrictive, as the project would improve the safety of publicly-owned roadways. The village also contended that taking ownership of the crossing infrastructure from CSX wouldn’t be in its or the county’s best interest due to “the risk and potential liabilities associated” with owning the gate system.

Instead, Reilly, who wrote the letter for the village, made the case the Quiet Zone could qualify as an “environmental project” under the SAM Grant guidelines, given that noise impact is a recognized environmental concern. 

The village has an adopted noise standard, Reilly wrote, and the trains crossing over Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue exceed these levels. The gate system, he argued, would address quality-of-life and environmental concerns related to train noise. 

On Aug. 14, Straut said that the state bought Reilly’s argument. 

“They were all very skeptical about it, but said, ‘You know what?’ We’ll run this up the flagpole. We’ll run it by DEC,’” Straut recounted, to which the Department of Environmental Conservation replied, “Yes, it’s an environmental project, which basically broke the roadblock.”

The Enterprise, which has written a dozen stories about the village’s attempt to fund the project, asked Straut: “So you’ve actually broken the funding roadblock? You’re going to get the money now?”

“That’s our understanding,” Straut said. 

County Spokeswoman Mary Rozak said of the funding in a statement, “We are getting very close and expect to have grant agreements finalized in September.” A request for confirmation from the Dormitory Authority was not immediately returned.