Christmas has come early for Quayside and Queensborough residents who’ve been railing against train whistles.
Effective today, train whistle cessation is being implemented at two railway crossings – Quayside Drive/Laguna Court and the Brookes Street pedestrian crossing in Port Royal. In a press release, the city states it has being working closely with Technical Safety British Columbia and Southern Railway of BC to ensure a smooth transition toward cessation at these crossings.
“We are delighted. We are happy for the community. We know it has been a long time coming,” said Stacey Neves, an engineering technologist in the engineering department’s design and construction division. “I’ve had emails back and forth with community members, and they have joked about it being an early Christmas present. We are just really, really happy to be moving forward with that.”
Even though whistle cessation takes effect at these crossings on Dec. 18, Neves reminds residents to be vigilant at train crossings and to heed the warning of Operation Lifesaver that “anytime is train time.”
While whistles will no longer be needed at these two crossings, it’s possible horns will sometimes be sounded, as permitted under Canadian Railway Operation Rules regulations.
“Under a section in those rules, if there is trespass in the corridor, whether it is human trespass or animal trespass or somebody trying to ‘beat the train’, they will still whistle,” Neves said. “Safety is always number 1.”
It's complicated
According to the city’s website, there are 22 railway crossings in the New Westminster – 12 on the mainland and 10 in Queensborough.
Neves said the city has reached whistle cessation at four of those crossings – the Begbie/Front streets and the Front/Fourth streets crossings, which are federally regulated, and the Quayside Drive crossing and Brookes Street pedestrian crossing in Queensborough, which are provincially regulated.
“We have part-time cessation at the 20th Street crossing. That one is on the CP line only,” Neves said. “What makes New West a little bit different than a lot of municipalities is we have four carriers through the city, and at each crossing we actually have multiple train tracks and not all of them are with one company.”
Neves noted there are times when the city needs to get approval from CN Rail, CP Rail, BNSF Railway and Southern Railway of British Columbia in order to get whistle cessation. Although that adds to the complexity of obtaining cessation, she said the city has great relationships with stakeholders.
“It is a lengthy process. We have to work with a number of stakeholders from the railways to the regulators,” she said. “Railways are a really regulated industry. We have to cross a lot of Ts and dot a lot of Is.”
The Quayside Community Board, which has advocated for relief for railway noise for more than a decade, tweeted that the news was “an early Christmas present” that came after years of work to get whistle cessation. In the early 2000s, the group filed complaints to the Canadian Transportation Agency regarding unreasonable rail noise and vibrations in the Quayside rail yard and lobbied the city and federal governments to take action to address train noise.
More to come
Other rail crossings on the city’s work plan for whistle cessation include several in Queensborough: Derwent Way and Salter Street; Ewen and Stanley Street; Ewen and Mercer Street; and Ewen and Furness Street. On the mainland, whistle cessation is still being worked on at crossings in Sapperton – Columbia and Cumberland, Spruce and Brunette, and Brunette and Braid.
“We are continuing to work with the stakeholders. We have a requirement through the Transport Canada Regulation to have all of our crossings up to the regulations by 2021. We are working on that,” Neves said. “We are trying to work our way into Sapperton.”
Neves said the city has received “a lot of complaints” about train noise from Sapperton residents and is working very hard on improvements at those crossings. Some work on the Cumberland, and potentially Spruce Street crossings, is planned for 2021, but that doesn’t mean whistle cessation will take place at those locations next year.
“It definitely means that we are going to taking those steps forward that are needed,” Neves said.
Because of the complexity of issues related to railway cessation, Neves said it’s too early to tell which crossings will be next and when that will occur.
“There are some crossings that will require a bit of time and an exceptional amount of work. We are kind of just working through those,” Neves said. “Like I said, Quayside took a number of years, took a lot of work. There are financial impacts to that. We are working through as best we can. I know that the goal of the city is to have cessation city wide, and we are working toward that.”
Roger Emanuels, the city’s manager of design and construction, recently told council the city’s draft 2021 budget includes funding for the purchase of crossing equipment and materials needed to achieve whistle cessation at some crossings in the city. He also noted the city has to complete works at rail crossings by November 2021 in order to ensure all federally-regulated grade crossings meet the requirements of the Grade Crossing Regulations.
“We did a comprehensive review of all of the crossings in 2020, and a lot of that work is coming out of that,” he told council at a budget workshop.
