Weyburn is home to the 65th worst railway crossing in all of Canada, out of over 21,000 rail crossings that have been assessed by Transport Canada, and the City of Weyburn was told in a report from consulting engineers that this crossing that this crossing should be closed to traffic.
The crossing in question is the Queen Street crossing, intersecting with Highway 39, and providing access to a number of businesses in the area, with three of them in the immediate vicinity of that crossing.
Weyburn has a total of eight rail crossings, and all of them were assessed by the consultants in view of new regulations adopted by Transport Canada two years ago. For seven of the eight crossings, the upgrades required to meet the new regulations would be relatively minor, mostly involving signage — but the Queen Street crossing is different.
According to the city’s records, this crossing has had six accidents since 1988, of which five occurred between 2010 and 2014, and amazingly, a close call occurred while this crossing was being assessed in September of this year. A freight train had to use emergency brakes to avoid hitting a B-train transport truck that was blocking the tracks at that crossing — a near miss, and according to the report, there have been many of these, most going unreported.
So what is to be done? There are businesses right in that vicinity to consider, but over and above that are serious safety considerations.
The sight-line is terrible, plus the physical distance between the crossing and Highway 39 is too short to allow for a truck of significant length to be using that crossing safely.
According to the report, the very minimum that should be done is the installation of flashing lights to warn of oncoming trains at that crossing, but then the question would be, who would pay for it, and would it make the crossing any safer? It doesn’t deal with the physical distance problem, and how would one enforce a restriction on long truck loads? Sit there and watch it to make sure no big trucks cross at that intersection?
Fortunately for the city, they have five years under the new regulations to either improve the safety of that crossing or to close it altogether. Either way, city council has that period of time to budget and plan, and to decide how to best approach this. The starting point would be, as suggested at council meeting, to hold an open house and inform the public and the businesses just what is at stake here. In the meantime, hopefully there aren’t any additional accidents at that crossing. — Greg Nikkel
