The Queen Anne resident knows that, he says, because he can hear train horns from his home on 11th Avenue West, and they're blowing "a heck of a lot more frequently" than they used to a year or so ago.
"It's been going on ever since Immunex started work down there," Smith said of the massive biotechnology company campus under construction on former Port of Seattle property at Terminal 88.
Train engineers are blowing their horns more often because more vehicles are cutting in front of the trains, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas.
Federal law requires horns to be sounded if there is an emergency, such as vehicles or pedestrians cutting across the tracks when trains are present, he explained. "And there have been numerous emergencies lately."
Smith doesn't completely buy that explanation. He said he recently saw and heard a train repeatedly sounding its horn a quarter mile away from the intersection.
"There was no traffic," said Smith, adding that he thought the five or six horn blasts coming from the train were unnecessary.
Melonas said the city is responsible for determining what kind of warning devices are installed at train crossings; there currently are lights and bells at West Galer Street.
Barrier gates - which would remove the need for trains to sound their horns - wouldn't work at the intersection because it is too wide, and there was some concern trucks could get stuck in the intersection when the barriers came down, Smith said.
Melonas said BNSF would like to see the street-level crossing at Galer closed off because doing so would increase safety and improve freight mobility by allowing trains to speed up along the Interbay rail corridor. The Port of Seattle feels the same way, according to spokesman Mick Shultz.
But it turns out closing Galer is easier said than done. The street-level crossing was closed for a few weeks after the flyover was opened to traffic, but that was only done because there was construction going on in the street, said Seattle Transportation spokeswoman Marybeth Turner.
Closing the street permanently is more problematic. Some Magnolia residents object to the idea because it would make it more difficult for traffic headed southbound on Elliott Avenue West from Magnolia and points north to get to the waterfront, she said.
Currently, southbound motorists can simply take a right off Elliott and cross West Galer Street, assuming there is no train traffic blocking the intersection.
"In the future, we're assuming there's going to be a lot more train traffic," Turner said.
A draft study about closing West Galer Street to traffic was completed for Seatran last summer, and it recommends the crossing be closed. According to the study, increased train traffic is a major reason.
Last year, an average of 63 trains a day crossed at the West Galer Street intersection, the study found. In 2003, that number is expected to jump to 83 trains per day, with 118 daily trains in 2010, according to the study.
Turner also noted that traffic on Elliott Avenue West is expected to increase in that time, but she said the study also recommends "some pretty big things" be done before the West Galer Street crossing is closed.
Chief among them would be adding another off-ramp to the flyover. "A southbound off-ramp from the Galer flyover would provide direct access from the west side of the BNSF railroad tracks to Elliott Avenue West," the study said.
Building the off-ramp would cost a bundle. Turner said a preliminary estimate drawn up in 1998 pegged the cost at $5 million to $8 million. The study, however, notes that the estimate is lower than it would be today because right-of-way costs have risen faster than even the inflation rate.
Smith said he wrote to BNSF a couple of months ago and mentioned the increasing amount of horn noise coming from trains at the intersection. He never heard back from the railroad, he said.
Smith added that there were only a couple of trains a day passing though Interbay when he and his wife moved into their home 40 years ago.
"You almost knew which ones they were."
It was kind of romantic, he remembers. These days the romance is gone.
"With 60 to 80 trains a day, it's not so neat," Smith said.
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