VOORHEESVILLE — Just weeks after a prominent proponent of the Quiet Zone proposal expressed frustration over its lack of progress, the village of Voorheesville has struck a deal that will allow the project to move forward.

The Quiet Zone and CSX-Norfolk Southern deal are “kind of attached at this point,” Mayor Rich Straut said on Dec. 21

The Quiet Zone, with a system of gates, would keep trains from sounding their horns as they regularly travel through the village.

In November of last year, CSX reached an agreement to acquire Pan Am Railways, headquartered in North Billerica, Massachusetts, which includes seven of its subsidiaries and their 1,200 miles of collective track. Norfolk Southern owns a 50-percent stake in one of the seven subsidiaries, Pan Am Southern.

The CSX-Norfolk Southern transaction, “as they call it,” Straut said, would result in Norfolk Southern’s currently unused tracks along Prospect Street being brought back online and merged into CSX’s rails for Norfolk Southern to run two trains a day between Massachusetts and points west of Voorheesville. 

The village raised its objection to the Surface Transportation Board and laid out a number of concerns it had and then entered into discussions with CSX and Norfolk Southern. “A big part of that has been the fact that it was disrupting the efforts that have been ongoing for about a decade to establish a Quiet Zone,” the mayor said. 

“All of these discussions have resulted in a draft of an agreement,” Straut said. 

During the Dec. 21 village board meeting, trustees authorized Straut to sign an agreement with CSX and Norfolk Southern which says, among other things, that, no matter what happens with the deal pending before the Surface Transportation Board:

— CSX will continue to work on the design and implementation of the Quiet Zone;

— Separately, CSX and Norfolk Southern “both agree to advance the survey and design work for the Quiet Zone project”; and

— CSX and Norfolk Southern will provide the county with the easements necessary to obtain grant funding from DASNY. There’s a provision in the grant that the county has to own the asset to obtain the funding.

Should the STB sign off on the deal, the agreement between the village, CSX, and Norfolk Southern also says, among other things:

— CSX and Norfolk Southern would incorporate the Quiet Zone work into their overall upgrades. 

“We wouldn’t have to ... produce a separate contract for that, OK? They would work on the construction as part of their overall improvements,” Straut said on Dec. 21. “[It] kind of streamlines the construction process”;

— In what Straut called “one of the most significant aspects” of the agreement, CSX said it would keep construction costs to its August 2016 estimate of approximately $288,000.

“As of late, they have indicated that that was not enough money,” Straut said of the initial estimate to construct the Quiet Zone. “However, that is the estimate on which the request for grants was made and the grants were issued.” Straut said the $288,000 estimate had been “juiced” to $400,000. The county received  $340,000 for the project in 2018, while another 80,000 in DASNY dollars had been allocated to the town of New Scotland for the project as well. 

With CSX agreeing to build the Quiet Zone at its original estimate, “it means that it’s financially feasible for us to do it,” the mayor said. Nearly a decade ago, when Straut’s employer, Barton & Loguidice, was still the village engineer, the firm at one point estimated the cost of construction to be $1.1 million; and

— Norfolk Southern will kick in $125,000 for its own Quiet Zone-related expenses. 

For the village to receive all these benefits, it’s agreed to withdraw its objections with the STB.

The deal is likely the best-case scenario for Voorheesville since the STB said CSX did not have to complete an environmental and historical review of the project, which would have been the village’s best shot to have its concerns addressed.