The Colleyville City Council authorized construction July 15 for safety improvements to set up a railroad quiet zone.

Council members showed majority support for the plan, which would upgrade crossings and provide pedestrian enhancements for the crossings at Bransford Road, Pleasant Run Road and John McCain Road. New council member Chris Putnam was the lone dissenting vote on the board, which authorized the $433,203 construction plan.

The upgrades would allow quiet zone designations that would bar trains from sounding their horns in the area.

A bit less than $19,000 of the funds for the work will come from the city's Park Land Dedication fund to cover a shortfall in grant funding for the work. The city applied for the grant in 2007.

City officials expect the upgrades will take 120 days. If the work begins in early September after approvals from the Texas Department of Transportation and Fort Worth Transportation Authority, it would likely be done before Christmas. Once the work is complete, the city will file notices that it intends to operate a quiet zone with the Federal Railroad Administration, which staff said will take about 45 days to clear before the quiet zone is in effect.

Putnam said he objected because of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority's involvement, and that 20 percent of the funding for the quiet zone came from "The T" board. He drew a correlation between the group's oversight of the developing TEX Rail project and the quiet zones in Colleyville.

"I don't want to be responsible for pledging a single dollar for encouraging, endorsing or accelerating the TEX Rail project," Putnam said.

He called it "disingenuous" to say there was no connection, as Mayor David Kelly insisted, between the quiet zones and the larger TEX Rail commuter rail project.

"It's not in support [of TEX Rail]," Kelly said. "These quiet zones have nothing to do with TEX Rail whether they go in or not. There's nothing associated with TEX Rail at all."

Kelly said the quiet zones were approved by the Fort Worth Transportation Authority on their own merit and are unrelated.