Quebec
We’d like to hear your story about how railway noise and vibration has affected you, and your community. Tell us about the problems you’ve had – or are continuing to have – with railway noise and vibration. How has it affected you and your quality of life? We’d like to hear about your successes and frustrations in resolving your concerns, as well as hear what current conditions are like in your area.
Blogs, Stories and Comments from Quebec Residents…
- Pointe Saint Charles, Montreal: Residents created their own blog Nous et les trains (Us and the Trains) to fight rail noise.
- Montreal: See the post Communities in the News: The List Continues to Grow.
Rail and Reason 
I have read many of your stories and realize that there are no existing enforceable standards for trains and railway yards. There are no more excuses which are plausible now that space heaters exist for train engines, which eliminate the need to have engines running all night while parked or on and off generated by computer signals. Wake up Rail transport. You are becoming a white elephant in the world of techno travel and in the cloud resources. What would Bill Gates say to your sub standard ways…. Get with the picture and enforce guidelines to protect the people for whom you work. Remember if you are not inventing new technology someone else will and there goes your source of income. The tobacco industry is having to shell out millions now that realization has struck…. you could be next….
You’ve hit the mark about one of the most serious, ongoing, and outdated practices associated with locomotive idling!
It’s unbelievable that, here in Canada, to keep a locomotive cab warm, the entire locomotive has to be left idling – and often for very long periods of time, sometimes well beyond simply overnight!
This has got to be one of this industry’s noisiest, most disruptive and wasteful practices. It directly impacts air quality for people living nearby as well.
If you have links to any of the space heaters that you indicate are available to address this problem – please send it to us, we’d like to hear back from you.
However, we can give you some good news as well: the federal government is looking to regulate locomotive emissions in 2013.
Stay tuned, we’ll be writing about it as soon as a draft of the regulations are made public.
The train is a constant form of aggravation and noise pollution we put barriers for highways well why not trains and in fact dangerous materials should take a detour from metropolitan areas wish there was a petition I would sign it
Just a link to a letter to the editor that was published in the Montreal Gazette:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Letter+Freight+trains+Point+Charles+Henri/8820358/story.html
Hello Mr. Sijpkes,
You are the noted author of this letter that you kindly provided a link to.
It’s an excellent letter, in terms of content, and addressing, in particular,
the growing problem in terms of the regulatory void in addressing community concerns regarding diesel emissions and air quality complaints from rail operations.
Thanks for contacting us.