What is going on here? I don't want to get swept up in all the frenzy about CN's lack of accountability and how shoddy the train system has gotten since the sale of BC Rail, but as a new resident I must ask: Has it always been like this? This morning (Aug. 31) I was driving to work - a routine I truly enjoy since moving away from cities - turned onto Cleveland Ave. from Highway 99 and ran smack into a traffic jam. What? In Squamish? It was, of course, caused by a train shunting oh so slowly back and forth, severing the main artery that links highway traffic to downtown. As I sat there minutes passed as one car after another did its own back and forth dance to get the heck out of town. I'd follow the cars' progress in my rearview mirror and watched every one of them head back out onto the highway. Who was in the car? Will they ever return? Who's business revenue suffered because of the severing of traffic, which ended up lasting a full half-hour? We'll never know.
One thing I do know is this town's train system is far too intrusive. I've lived near tracks in the past and enjoyed the romance of rumbling, clacking and occasional tooting trains heard throughout the day and night. But this new shunting of cars in residential areas at ungodly hours of the morning has turned some very peace-loving friends of mine into sleep-deprived, near-homicidal maniacs.
And to add insult to injury, since the sale of BC Rail included just its tracks and rolling stock - not its land - CN can (and does!) pawn off the responsibility of sign and right-of-way maintenance onto the municipality, better known as your tax dollars.
Given the recent mess they've made in our backyard, you'd think they'd be little more gracious, but you'd be wrong. CN doesn't even make a pretense of caring for residents of the towns they use.
A Chief employee recently wrote CN a very polite e-mail asking what they're policy is on the amount of time a roadway can be blocked after waiting 45 minutes for a train to go by with half a dozen other co-workers. The women even back-tracked to the West Coast Railway Heritage park, a short cut many locals stuck by trains utilize, only to find that the train spanned the distance from south of downtown to north of the park. The e-mail was written a month ago, and she's received no response.
CN is a huge corporation that spans throughout North America. I can just picture a CN suit sitting at a screen reading Crystal's email, saying "Squamish who?"
So what can be done? We can sit in our vehicles and blast our horns, lie awake at night imagining the satisfaction bazooka-fire would bring or make so much noise that even CN could here us over their own din.
I think that will ultimately have to depend on CN.
