Editorials
October 30, 2008 11:35 PM
There are few issues that stir up debate more than train whistles.
In communities across Canada, those opposed to spending tax dollars to beef up crossings to stop the whistles do battle with those who have to endure the shrill sound on a daily basis.
In Brockville a few years back, the issue literally divided the town following the death of a 12-year-old girl at a level crossing.
It led CN Rail to scrap Brockville’s six-year-old train whistle ban, inciting furious debate — so much that the editor of the local newspaper stopped printing letters on the subject.
Letters similar to the ones on this page.
Aurora is considering a ban similar to Brockville’s, but such a move comes at cost — part of it detailed, part intangible.
The town is considering shelling out about $10,000 to update a study on its level crossings that cost it roughly $15,000 when it was produced in 2004 and updated in 2006. Transport Canada says it’s now out of date.
That’s the cost that’s known.
The part that isn’t is what it will take to upgrade those crossings to satisfy safety concerns so the ban can be put in place. Those figures won’t be available until Aurora gets the go-ahead from Transport Canada, public works director Ilmar Simanovskis said.
And then there’s another cost.
Saturday’s death of a Toronto woman on the tracks close to her home might have been avoided had the train sounded its horn, a Canadian Pacific Railway spokesperson said.
“Normally, when a train goes across the crossing, it sounds a horn. In this case, presumably because the city had requested it, the train did not activate its whistle,’’ CP senior manager of media relations Mike LoVecchio told the Canadian Press Sunday.
Not only have people died at crossings where train whistles were banned, but towns that enact such bylaws could open themselves up to liability if such a tragedy occurs.
Aurora councillors were made aware of this at a recent meeting.
“Residents have dealt with this problem for long enough,” Mayor Phyllis Morris said.
“Some have put forth a counter argument that, ‘They bought near the railway and should have known better’, but I would say to them that there are other residents who live nowhere near the railway that have to deal with the issue of freight trains blowing their horns at night.”
No matter how many safety measures are put in place, tragedies are still going to happen.
But resident safety should take precedence over noise issues — ones residents should have know of, or at least considered a possibility, when they purchased homes so close to a rail line.