The sound of train horns and the traffic congestion that often come with them, has become a part of life in San Marco, but a proposal before the Jacksonville City Council could be the first step toward changing that.<\/p>\n
Council members are expected to consider ordinance 2026-0886 on Tuesday, a proposal that would authorize Jacksonville to spend approximately $90,000 on a preliminary engineering study for a potential 24-hour quiet zone in the San Marco neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Not everyone in the area believes train noise is a major problem. Julia and her husband Bill were in San Marco celebrating Bill’s 90th birthday by doing something he has loved for most of his life: watching trains.<\/p>\n
“It’s Bill’s 90th birthday, so he wanted to celebrate it and watch the trains,” Julia said. Bill said train noise has never bothered him. “All my life I’ve been very interested in trains,” he said. Julia believes her family lived near the train tracks when she was growing up and it never bothered her.<\/p>\n
“My aunt lived next to the train tracks when I was a little girl, about from here to those tracks,” she said. “The trains went through all hours of the night. You just got used to it.” Under the proposed ordinance, trains would still travel through San Marco if a quiet zone were eventually established, but routine horn sounding could be reduced or eliminated if federal safety requirements are met.<\/p>\n
Litza, who works just feet away from the train tracks in San Marco, says the train noise can be disruptive but believes any effort to reduce it must be balanced with safety. “I think as long as the appropriate safety measures are considered, I don’t think it would be a detriment to the area,” she said. “I used to live in the area way back in the day and remember the train waking me up in the middle of the night, so I think residents would appreciate it.”<\/p>\n
The study would be conducted in partnership with Florida East Coast Railway, L.L.C. and would identify safety improvements as well as provide cost estimates before any quiet zone is implemented. Litza says she supports exploring the idea if it could improve quality of life for residents.<\/p>\n
“As a citizen I always want the city to be spending money on things that can improve our quality of life and if our council people think that this could contribute to that, then I’m on board,” said Litza.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance will be discussed during Tuesday’s meeting of the Jacksonville City Council, which begins at 5 p.m. at City Hall. Tuesday’s proposal would only authorize the engineering study and would not create the quiet zone itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sound of train horns and the traffic congestion that often come with them, has become a part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-452496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}