VOORHEESVILLE —  Barring another out-of-left-field request, Voorheesville’s nearly decade-and-a-half pursuit to install a Quiet Zone in the heart of the village appears to finally have the all-clear. 

“Signed on our end,” County Spokeswoman Mary Rozak told The Enterprise by email. “CSX stated that [the contracts] are still being routed and should be a couple more weeks before we at the county get them back.”

There were two agreements for the Quiet Zone: one largely settled for construction and one that nobody saw coming for maintenance.

CSX declined to comment.

Installing four-quadrant gate systems at Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue, two county-owned roads, would allow train engineers to not have to blow their whistles as they travel past the two crossings because the quad gates are designed to block all lanes of traffic on both sides of the track.

In late 2021, CSX and Norfolk Southern were tripping over one another, as they planned to route mile-long, double-decker trains through Altamont and Voorheesville, to pick up both villages’ tab on the expensive rehabilitation costs associated with the deal the two freight carriers struck as part of CSX’s $601 million acquisition of Pan Am Railways. 

But a year after Voorheesville rescinded its objection to the deal, the village was informed by CSX that it and Albany County would be on the hook for $50,000 in annual maintenance costs for the safety-gate system. 

“That came out of left field because there was no mention of maintenance” in the December 2021 agreement between the village and freight carriers, Mayor Rich Straut told The Enterprise in 2022. “I would have thought that would have been kind of laid out at that time.”

But the village and county continued to push back on CSX, which, after two years of insisting on $50,000 in annual upkeep, returned to the table in May with a $20,000-per-year proposal; the village and county will ultimately each be responsible for $10,200 in annual maintenance costs.

While the annual maintenance fee would have been a hit to Voorheesville’s coffers, the village’s insistence on not assuming significantly more legal liability related to the Quiet Zone will pay off more in the long run. 

 For some municipalities seeking to establish a Quiet Zone, it can be a fraught financial endeavor that can sometimes turn into a legal one, which, in turn, becomes a financial problem. That’s because, in seeking to establish a Quiet Zone, a municipality can fundamentally alter its legal liabilities. 

By silencing the train horn, a municipality allegedly assumes a greater share of the risk should an accident occur. And, while federal statute can pre-empt some lawsuits based solely on the failure of a conductor to sound his or her horn in a compliant Quiet Zone, government regulations can’t ever completely  eliminate liability.

By shifting focus away from the person driving the train, questions can be asked about the adequacy of safety measures put in place by the local public authority, meaning a municipality can be sued if these measures are deemed insufficient, improperly designed, or malfunctioning, creating a new duty of care.