Caitlin Hillyard and her husband, Ben Weinberg, moved into a townhouse on Brown Avenue in August 2022. After about a month of living there, they started noticing a recurring noise from the train tracks, loud enough to be heard inside their home.
“Sometimes it sounds like somebody jackhammering the side of the house,” Hillyard said. “Sometimes it sounds kind of like a drum circle.”
Just south of Jewel-Osco in River Forest, the noise comes from idling freight trains on the railroad tracks, waiting for one crew to get off the train and another to board. But that idling doesn’t come without side effects.
When Hillyard and Weinberg stand outside their townhome, they have measured sound up to 90 decibels, the same intensity as a power tool or hair dryer. This powerful noise can have adverse effects on the body and health, causing an increase in adrenaline and cortisol and activating the nervous system, all of which negatively impact cardiovascular health, research shows.
But the trains don’t just have an auditory impact. The couple’s townhouse floor vibrates when trains idle. Their neighbors have reported cracks in their ceiling. And they smell diesel fuel outside, and sometimes inside their home, too.
“We’ve described it to people as trying to sleep inside of a factory,” Hillyard said. And it affects her and her husband’s wellbeing. “The first couple of weeks of February, we were having about 10 hours a day of idling, most of it overnight hours. We didn’t get more than five hours of sleep for two weeks straight.”
The couple records the idling trains in a spreadsheet, although they aren’t always home to report when they sit outside their home. Even still, this year, they’ve seen more than 100 trains idle for a collective total of more than 280 hours, with an average three-and-a-half-hour idle time during the day. In 2023, nearly 450 trains idled here.
“The trains going past us on the tracks, when they’re moving, do not bother us,” Hillyard said. “We can tolerate a certain amount of noise, but this is just not anything we ever had any idea about.”
Hillyard and Weinberg have made a website to inform others about the issue and created a Change.org petition with more than 400 signatures.
But trains have been idling in the area for much longer than Hillyard and Weinberg have lived in the area.
Chicago is the United States’ busiest rail hub, with 25% of all the nation’s rail freight traffic.
Hillyard and Weinberg heard that trains started idling near their home around 2015. From the couple’s discussions with Union Pacific Railroad — one of several railways whose trains idle on the tracks in Forest Park — village commissioners and other government agencies, Hillyard said that railroads used to designate stretches of track in River Forest and Oak Park to crew changes, but settled in between around that time. Though, there are still rampant complaints from River Forest locals about idling trains.
Union Pacific Railroad declined a phone interview for this story, but emailed the following statement:
“Union Pacific and other railroads have been using this location for crew changes and transfers for more than 10 years, with few complaints or issues. This site, which is situated directly between commercial and industrial properties, allows us to switch crews safely without blocking railroad crossings or impacting traffic flows.”
After talking to train crews, Hillyard and Weinberg learned that trains also used to idle trains at Wolf Road and Proviso Drive in Berkley, a much more industrial area.
“They told us that they do it here because they can drive a vehicle up to the train so the crews don’t have to walk,” Hillyard said of communication with the crews idling near her home. “It’s hard for us to believe, with all of the railroads’ money and power and influence, that they couldn’t find any other place to do it away from homes in all of Chicagoland.”
The couple’s year-and-a-half long contact with Union Pacific Railroad started with the company saying they would look for another idling location. But in November, they received a letter stating that “After much discussion, the lumber yard spur at Mile Post 9.2 of the Geneva Subdivision was determined to be a reasonable staging and crew change location.”
Potential idling solutions
Idling trains are an issue outside of the Forest Park area, too. In Feb. 2023, SB1513 was filed in the Illinois General Assembly, aiming to amend the Illinois Commercial Transportation Law so that rail carriers can’t idle within 1,000 feet of a residence, business or school for longer than 30 minutes in a manner that contributes to air pollution.
Hillyard said that the Union Pacific Railroad is planning to plant a row of trees in the coming week to help with noise mitigation.
According to the U.S. Forest Service, noise reduction begins with an 100-foot wide grove of trees, which cuts noise by up to five decibels, and a single row of trees won’t provide a noticeable difference.
“We’re really not very optimistic that will work, based on our own research,” Hillyard said. “We also want a strong stance saying, not just that you need to mitigate the noise,” she added, “but you need to not do this here.”
“You shouldn’t have to think of every possible outcome of buying a condo,” said Michelle Melin-Rogovin, the village’s commissioner of streets and public improvements. “You shouldn’t have to think like that, and there should be some way of fixing this that makes sense.”
Melin-Rogovin has met with Hillyard and Weinberg, but also several other residents in the surrounding townhouses. She has had regular contact with Union Pacific Railroad and Congressman Danny Davis’ office, whom she said has also fielded concerns about idling trains from locals.
“This is an ongoing conversation that we’re having with them,” Melin-Rogovin said.
In addition to asking the village for help in communicating with Union Pacific Railroad and other villages, Hillyard and Weinberg are waiting for a solution that’s not just a row of greenery, but moving idling zones away from all neighborhoods.
“You shouldn’t be doing this near anyone’s house because it essentially makes it so we can’t sleep in our homes or use them for what they’re intended to be using for, which is living in them,” Hillyard said.
Melin-Rogovin agrees: “It’s about making life better for your neighbor. And we should all want to do that in some way.” She added, “It’s really not about trains, it’s about people feeling comfortable in their home” and “it’s about basic human compassion.”