Скачать или смотреть Patchogue Village Deal w/ LIRR to Idle Trains Damages Citizen Property & Hearing at Insane Decibels

Long Island’s Brookhaven Township has a quaint area called Patchogue Village with a zip code of 11772. Within Patchogue Village is a block named Academy Street with over 100 homes on the block, all paying $8000-$14,000 and rising in taxes to Patchogue Village and Brookhaven schools, police, and services every year. Along this road is a strip of railroad lined with houses for local workers, business owners, and average families with plenty of small children and elderly. And they have all been complaining for years regarding the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) using it as an idling station with no regard to noise or pollution. Calls to the LIRR and petitions to the village by many of these home owners, even calls & articles written by locally positioned New York State Senator Alexis Weik get placated responses or completely ignored, making it seem as if a financial agreement between Patchogue and the LIRR make them less inclined to care for their citizens. Despite this, the village is not offering a tax break for those being forced to deal with it at the villages benefit. In fact, most on the block are seeing a total tax hike average of $500-800 per home this year alone.

A safe limit of commercial sound, according to the Village’s own code, is 75 decibels at the property line of where it originates from. Meanwhile a single train regularly hits 85-90 dB over 70 feet away from their property line at the street, meaning it’s even louder & more dangerous in those homes and yards backing the railroad. They idle for anywhere from 20min to 4 hours at a time, ranging from trying to relax and host at 1PM or trying to sleep before work or school from 8PM to 1AM. Sometimes they park TWO trains next to each other and idle for an hour while the phasing soundwaves at their peak hit 105dB in the street*, collapsing plaster ceilings and cracking vintage glass windows in homes *across the street and damaging the hearing of adults & young children alike across half the block. In these moments, it sounds like an ice cream truck is parked in your bedroom while you’re trying to sleep, or right next to you in your enclosed livingroom while you close windows and still SHOUT to speak to the guest who stopped by.

This is outrageously inconsiderate to forcefully continue in residential back yards. The street level diesel exhaust and blatant noise violations are creating unsafe living conditions while directly causing property damage & health damages from being well past dangerous decibels. Many home owners complain that it is also damaging property values, sabotaging sales that were in contract as buyers do walkthroughs & decide it isn’t worth the daily droning. The effect on sleep on morale also trickles down to local businesses as owners & workers alike come in with reduced sleep or the stress of needing to repair their homes at their own expense due to the LIRR causing their ceilings to collapse and walls to crack apart.

The LIRR has plenty of commercial land less than a minute away along railways in each direction that they could idle behind. They were also given $3 million in taxpayer money to build such a station almost three years ago and still have not. They finally released an arrogant statement this year saying they intend to build such a station next year with the money, that they need more money since they created their own problem waiting so long into inflation, and that once completed they intend to idle at BOTH stations.

This arrogant disregard to local taxpayers needs to be addressed. Patchogue Village and Brookhaven Township need to be more proactively involved in this issue. The LIRR need to use the funds they were given freely by taxpayers and augment with their own funds to idle elsewhere. They also need to turn the engines off if idling more than 15min. They claim it’s not efficient to turn back on, but many on Academy Street have witnessed the rare relieving occasion of them turning a train off for 10min before turning it on and leaving within 40 seconds of starting the train. There is no reason for this noise and diesel pollution to continue. State senators are frustrated with the lack of responsibility or consideration. The locals are rallying once more for another round of petitions. The ongoing risks and damages to health & property have many on the block considering a class action against each municipality involved in ignoring these concerns if productive AND contractual statements aren’t released soon.

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P.S. from the editor: The 5AM westbound conductor needs a stern talking to for consistently blaring horns full blast 3x at each intersection every morning for the last year. It’s as if they’re toxically satisfying a vendetta against an ex living in the area. Like the issues outlined above, it’s insultingly inconsiderate to everyone who lives here. Every other conductor manages to very lightly come into a horn at that hour. No reason to smash the horn full blast at five in the morning.