While Tukwila may get fixes for its light rail noise problem sooner, neighborhoods along the rest of the line will likely wait until at least August for all the clanging and squealing to be addressed. Sound Transit and the city of Seattle are currently adjusting the first set of bells that go off at every intersection right before a train arrives, according to Johnathan Jackson, the program manager at Sound Transit who is supervising the noise corrections. “We’re trying to tone it down,” Jackson says of those initial warning bells, which were installed by the city as part of its trafficking system. He says the agency is trying to address neighbors’ concerns while still making the bells loud enough to be heard over traffic (and presumably avoid accidents like this one a few months back).But there’s a second set of bells controlled by Sound Transit, which is why there’s still such a cacophony of clanging along the line. The train’s operators ring those as they approach and leave every intersection. Adjustments to those bells are likely to wait until after Sound Transit conducts noise measurements along the line in August, Jackson says. (The recent noise test that vindicated neighbors’ complaints was done only at one house in Tukwila.) Also pending those tests is possible lubrication of the tracks to reduce the trains’ squealing. Jackson says Sound Transit is open to lubrication anywhere squealing is a problem, not just around the Mount Baker station, as has been reported. Sound Transit has one more card it can play to reduce noise: insulation of individual homes. Jackson says the agency has already insulated 129 homes in South Seattle and has six more to do–at a total cost of about $4 million, none of which residents have to pay. But that doesn’t sound like an appealing option, to say the least. The apparent expectation is that residents, in order to shut the noise out, won’t open their windows. Bereft of fresh air, residents will instead get a ventilation system installed. The insulation that has already happened was done on the basis of noise tests that simulated the sound of the trains. Speakers booming train-like sounds–minus the bells– were set up outside residents’ homes. Jackson says Sound Transit may do more now that residents get to hear the real thing. “Whenever you engineer something, there’s going to be tweaks in real time,” he says.