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Pleasanton’s push to limit trains from blowing their horns as they pass through downtown is facing an unexpected obstacle: The project, originally expected to cost $200,000, could now cost the city nearly $14 million.
Mike Tassano, Pleasanton’s traffic engineer, said that although it’s possible the price tag could kill the initiative entirely, there could still be a way to compromise with state and federal agencies to develop a nighttime-only quiet zone.
“It is frustrating to have what you thought was a solution in place … just not be what California thinks is an acceptable solution,” Tassano told the Weekly. “We’ll continue to try and move forward and try and get something in for the residents … It may be possible, it just may be way too expensive.”
Donna Pulvermacher is a 25-year resident of Pleasanton who lives in the St. John Court neighborhood. Having lived right next to the railroad tracks for so long, Pulvermacher said, the noise from trains passing by was never really a big issue for her — until recently.
“It is (passing by) more frequently than it used to be when I first moved here, and maybe a little bit louder,” she said.
In early 2025, she joined a growing number of downtown residents asking the city to look into establishing the quiet zone, a designated segment of rail line with one or more consecutive crossings where train drivers do not have to blow their horns to alert pedestrians or vehicles.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration in 2006 established criteria that need to be met for quiet-zone designation.
Since those regulations were adopted, Pleasanton has included a quiet zone study on its list of potential projects to fund. However, Tassano said, the city has not prioritized that project for the last two decades for a number of reasons, one of the most recent being the city’s budget challenges.
Still, he said, it’s always been a project he thought would be beneficial to the residents’ quality of life.
“I think it provides an actual, real benefit to the public,” Tassano said.
City’s plan to establish quiet zone hits a snag
Downtown residents share Tassano’s desire to get something done. Over several months last year, dozens voiced their support for finally establishing a quiet zone, including longtime resident Jim Lehrman, who launched an online petition that garnered more than 400 signatures.
After hearing from residents, the City Council gave staff the green light in August 2025 to conduct a feasibility study and design the quiet zone. The council subsequently approved a $168,858 contract with Kimley-Horn and Associates for the work.
When staff looked at the criteria for establishing such a zone, they estimated the city would have to pay roughly $200,000 to build a new median on Santa Rita Road, based on the Federal Railroad Administration’s quiet-zone calculator, Tassano said.
Then things got complicated, he said.
After its consultant drew up the design for the median, the plans had to be reviewed by a diagnostic team made up of representatives from the Federal Railroad Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission and the Union Pacific Railroad. Those stakeholders have various responsibilities over railroad tracks, ranging from overseeing compliance with federal regulations and conducting maintenance to owning and operating the actual railroad crossings.
After the city met with those representatives in June, Tassano said, the price tag for improvements deemed necessary to establish the quiet zone had skyrocketed to $13.8 million.
Modifications required to address safety concerns
Sharon Petrehn, Pleasanton’s public information officer, said the diagnostic team identified several crossing modifications required to “address current safety standards and operational conditions beyond the median island recommendation.”
Those modifications included new pedestrian gates at Santa Rita Road and St. Mary Street, new pedestrian posts with flashers at Rose Avenue and West Angela Street and several other replacements at all four crossings. Estimated costs for each site ranged from $2.75 million at Rose Avenue to $4.8 million at Santa Rita Road.
Some of the modifications are intended to address safety concerns raised by the state and federal agencies, including cars stopping on the tracks and heavy pedestrian traffic.
City staff questioned the need for many of the modifications, citing low pedestrian traffic at most crossings. The exception, they said, was Santa Rita Road, which sees heavier pedestrian traffic from Amador Valley High School students walking past the tracks. However, Tassano said, improvements like pedestrian gates are still required and would necessitate a complete retrofit of the crossing areas.
City officials met with a group of residents last week to share updates. Both Lehrman and Pulvermacher said they were frustrated with the revised price tag.
“Because it’s so expensive, (the quiet zone) is unlikely to happen at all,” Lehrman said. “There won’t be a quiet zone, and there won’t be any safety upgrades either.”
Lehrman said he saw the required modifications as subjective and questioned whether there was any quantitative data to determine if they were needed.
“It just doesn’t seem rational to me,” he said. “I go past the crossings once in a while, and it’s a pretty clear warning to me (to) stay back, whether there’s horns blaring in the distance or not.”
Pulvermacher said she felt the same way, adding that the existing gates are usually her main indicator that a train is coming.
“To me, the recommendations were total overkill,” she said.
Staff working to identify a possible compromise
Tassano said he shares a lot of those frustrations.
“I tend to agree that I don’t think that the train horn is a primary notification system at the crossing; it’s the arms and the bells and the flashing lights,” he said. “But my opinion, it doesn’t necessarily align with the (California Public Utilities Commission’s) opinion on the benefits of the train horn.”
He said it’s unlikely the city will be able to appeal the diagnostic team’s recommendations because the people who oversee appeals work in the same agencies that made those determinations.
Staff and the consultant are working to identify other options to present to the railroad agencies, he said.
One suggestion from a resident who attended the Nov. 9 neighborhood meeting was to establish a nighttime quiet zone from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Lehrman and Pulvermacher said that wouldn’t be their first choice, but they could live with the compromise.
“I’m hoping that the city will continue to work on some sort of solution, even if it isn’t a total quiet zone,” Pulvermacher said.
Tassano said that while he would like to see that type of compromise, nothing has been presented to the railroad agencies yet. He said he hopes to return to the community sometime in January with more information.
