Jennifer Rees says she can't let her kids play in the backyard because of the diesel fumes emitted by trains idling nearby.

8 April 2011

Trains Send Residents Off the Rails

Coquitlam British Columbia - They say it's a daily nightmare that's caused damage to their homes, their children's health, and their ability to enjoy some peace and quiet.
 
Two east Coquitlam neighbours are speaking out against what they say is a non-stop case of trains idling, in some instances for hours, just steps away from their backyards.
 
A spokesperson for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), however, says the company is doing what it can to alleviate the problem of trains idling.
 
Reece Avenue residents Jennifer Rees and Robert Ruff say the problem centres around a stop light located just outside their backyards that dictates when and how often trains enter the nearby CPR yard in Port Coquitlam.
 
"It happens every day," said Ruff, who has lived in the area for 13 years. "Some days are better than others, but you won't go a day usually without a train sitting back there. Sometimes it's 10 minutes. Sometimes it's half an hour. Sometimes it's three or four hours."
 
The pair say the trains idle outside their backyards while the operators wait for clearance to enter the yard, and that causes the trains to emit diesel fumes toward their properties. On top of that, they say the noise is damaging their homes.
 
"It's cracked our foundation and our tile in our basement," Ruff said. "There's a San Andreas fault running through the kitchen in our basement suite."
 
Rees, a mother with two young kids, fears the diesel emissions could worsen her son's heart aneurysm. She said she's lived in the area for close to five years, and the trains sometimes idle upwards of 10 times per day at all hours.
 
"It's not fair to my kids to have to tell them you always have to play in the house when there's a train out there, because sometimes the trains are idling there for hours and hours and hours," she said.
 
Both Rees and Ruff said they have attempted to contact CPR officials to see if those lights could be moved 250 metres down the tracks to a non-residential area. The pair were told it couldn't be done due to an estimated $1-million price tag associated with the move.
 
"It may be a little bit costly to move it down a little bit, but it's not like they have to order a new one," Rees said. "But the whole point is, once you realize that you're polluting a whole neighbourhood, that million dollars shouldn't even matter."
 
CPR spokesperson Mike LoVecchio said a company directive is in place to prevent trains for idling for more than 15 minutes, and that policy has been in place since 2007.
 
"CP has equipped over 80 percent of our locomotives with some form of anti-idling device, which, under certain operating conditions will shut down the locomotives instead of letting them idle," LoVecchio said.
 
"For those that do not have the equipment, they are subject to internal policies to manually shut them down when similar conditions exist."
 
Both Ruff and Rees concede that some concessions should be made, and are not suggesting that the trains stop running entirely.
 
In Rees's case, she said she and her husband were told by their realtor that only West Coast Express trains ran by their property at set hours in the morning and in the early evening.
 
On their first night in their new home, they were awoken by trains idling outside during the late evening hours.
 
"I was so mad at myself. I should have looked behind the treeline," she said. "My husband and I both really didn't investigate enough. We just took the realtor at face value for what he said.
 
"It was our first house and I was pregnant at the time. We were just excited that we could afford the house."
 
As for Ruff, he just wants to find a happy medium.
 
"We understand that business has to carry on, but you have to make some concessions now that there's a vast community living in this area whereas 30 years ago there wasn't," he said.
 
"Now that there is, they should have some consideration for people living in the community, because it's the people that make the railway function."
 
John Kurucz.