Babs De Lay complained for years about TRAX noise by her home. After she was named to the UTA board, the agency took extra steps to fix the problem.

Babs De Lay complained for years to the Utah Transit Authority about TRAX trains screeching as they rounded the curve near her real estate office and home at 400 West and 200 South in Salt Lake City.

After she was appointed to the UTA board, documents show, the agency seemed to shift into higher gear to reduce the noise. Trains were ordered to slow down and crews told to “double up or triple our efforts” that already included written orders to manually lubricate tracks there every three hours or so.

While UTA says it did no special favors for De Lay, it appears the agency did more to reduce noise there than at other curves. UTA explains that by saying it used the curve by De Lay’s office to experiment with solutions for the whole system.

The document trail allows the situation to be viewed in a number of ways: a simple case of the proverbial (and literal) squeaky wheel getting the grease; UTA doing favors for a board member; or maybe a cautionary tale that even a board member couldn’t get UTA to promptly fix problems.

De Lay declined comment, relaying word Friday through UTA that she was unavailable because she is in the process of moving her mother to Florida.

After The Salt Lake Tribune received a tip, it filed an open-records request for UTA documents related to De Lay’s complaints and the agency’s noise-reduction efforts.

Complaining since 2008

In one early example, De Lay wrote to then-state Rep. Jennifer Seelig, D-Salt Lake City, who in turn asked UTA to address the concern.

“UTA has done nothing about the TRAX squeal. I know, I’ve been home 95 percent of the last four days and the noise is only worse,” De Lay wrote. She said UTA had promised to oil the tracks, but it was not happening regularly — so she vowed to complain to the mayor’s office, the health department and on social media.

“I’m done being nice. My quality of life is suffering immensely,” she wrote. “As my life has become a living hell from TRAX noise in the winter, I’m going to make sure the word gets out to all the future neighborhoods who will be experiencing TRAX in the next few years … that TRAX is noisy, it’s not monitored regularly, and UTA does not make good neighbors.”

Her complaints — and those from neighbors — continued for years. Correspondence shows that UTA said it was trying to reduce noise, including softening chimes on trains and attempting to grease tracks during cold weather, when screeching was the worst. But residents complained that efforts were haphazard.

In 2015, the year before De Lay’s board appointment, documents show that UTA adopted a new “standard operating procedure” for the curve at 400 West and 200 South that included requiring manually lubricating the tracks there about every three hours from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. between Nov. 1 and March 31.

Just before New Year’s Day 2016, House Speaker Greg Hughes — who is allowed to appoint one member to the 16-member UTA Board — announced he was naming De Lay as a trustee.

Documents show she complained again about the noise the January she was appointed, and UTA said it was listening closely — and promised, for example, “to have someone there shortly” to add lubricant after a complaint. The UTA rail project manager also promised to look into noise problems.

Screeching returns

A UTA administrator emailed her a couple of months later to see how noise was, and De Lay replied that bad screeching “hasn’t happened again.”

In January 2017, De Lay and a neighbor started complaining again about loud screeching and speeding by trains that amplified the noise, documents show.

Todd Provost, then the light rail general manager, wrote replies saying UTA had quickly checked speed of trains with a radar gun to help ensure compliance. He said he had teams manually lubricating the tracks “up to four times a day” and said crews did some grinding on the track, “which seemed to help.”

But De Lay and others continued complaints for months. In the summer and fall, they said trains were screeching as loudly as they do usually only during the winter. When UTA again started recording the trains’ noise levels, the loudest was 83 decibels, but most readings were in the 60-to-70-decibel range.

(For comparison, a garbage disposal operates at 80 decibels, a food blender at 88.)

UTA experimented with a variety of lubricants and methods to reduce noise on the curve, documents say.

But De Lay complained in September, “The screeching is at Dec/Jan levels this morning. Frankly, I’m so tired of complaining I could just scream. I just watched out my window a train heading to the main station hauling ass, of course causing major screeching.”

In December, she emailed officials, “I may be a board member of UTA, but I can honestly say I have no faith anymore in the noise reduction system/efforts. … I no longer believe anything I hear from staff that they are working on the problem.”

Noting complaints by De Lay and a neighbor that month, Provost, now UTA vice president of operations, ordered in an email, “We need to double up or triple our efforts to try to give them some short-term relief,” especially late at night.

December UTA emails reported “crews have been instructed to lubricate the rails every hour between 8 p.m. and midnight.” That month, it also formally reduced speed limits for trains at that curve to 7 mph.

Special treatment?

The Tribune asked UTA if its noise-reduction efforts at the curve in question were different than at others.

In a written statement, the agency said that for years it has been “using the 400 West/200 South curve as a test site to find a permanent solution that works in different weather and temperature conditions.”

UTA spokesman Carl Arky said additionally that the agency’s maintenance staff lubricates some other curves daily, including on 700 South at Main Street and at 200 West. He said “this typically occurs every three to four hours, or as needed since temperature can affect how noisy the rails are.”

UTA’s written statement also said it is now installing mechanisms on TRAX trains that spray the rails with water (or water with antifreeze in cold weather) as they pass over tracks in curves, “which will eventually eliminate the need to manually lubricate the rails.”

How much has the noise reduction at De Lay’s curve cost?

“The cost of lubricants (water and antifreeze) is negligible; the cost of staff to apply lubrication is included in UTA’s maintenance budget,” Arky responded by email. “This isn’t broken out separately because this task is just one of many the maintenance staff performs each day. However, the coming switch to a mechanized system will allow maintenance staff to focus on other duties.”

The spokesman also said UTA did not engage in favoritism.

“The agency’s efforts are not a special favor to Trustee De Lay or anyone else. In fact, UTA values her regular monitoring of rail noise, which has been helpful in identifying ways to mitigate the issue throughout the TRAX system.”

Under SB136, passed by the Legislature in March, the current 16-member, part-time UTA board will disband and be replaced by a full-time, three-member commission appointed by the governor — who may also remove them at will.

Legislators argued that the new structure will be more accountable and help avoid scandals, such as those in the past over high executive salaries, extensive international travel and sweetheart deals with developers.

De Lay was appointed to the board to replace a member — former Utah Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack — who became mired in controversy over a trip to Switzerland during which he and others visited a rail manufacturer then bidding on a UTA facility. The belatedly reported trip forced a temporary suspension of the bid, and Killpack and a second board member on the trip resigned a short time later.