Costs To NOT Relocating White Rock-Crescent Beach Train Track

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Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Crescent Beach, BC

I'd like to say bye-bye for good to the trains running busily back and forth along the coastal track through White Rock and Crescent Beach. Both are seaside communities and people magnets. At one time a wistful vision of adventure whistling around the bend and vital connector to isolated towns, this wrongly placed railway has evolved into a dangerous, sometimes deadly, machine. 

The passenger train from Seattle to Vancouver slips more swiftly and quietly down the track than one imagines and the lumbering long string of freight trains carrying tanks and boxcars of dangerous goods blocks access to Crescent Beach regularly, including emergency vehicles, for long stretches of time. 

It would be expensive to move the track to a less populated area. Links to articles listed (below) show, however, that doing nothing has unintended greater costs. 

Articles reporting on people struck by the trains:

https://www.peacearchnews.com/news/breaking-pedestrian-reportedly-struck-by-passenger-train-in-south-surrey/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/man-dead-after-being-struck-by-a-train-in-surrey-1.3077059

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wandering-dementia-patient-hit-by-train-in-white-rock-1.2520502

http://www.vancouversun.com/White+Rock+jogger+looked+right+missed+train+left/8668730/story.html

The Crescent Beach community cut off from all vehicle access (that includes emergency) for 45 minutes:

https://www.peacearchnews.com/news/freight-train-cuts-crescent-beach-access-for-45-minutes/

A few of my posts over the years (below) about the increasingly busier railway track:

https://penelopepuddleworld.blogspot.com/2012/12/wrong-side-of-tracks-at-crescent-beach.html

https://penelopepuddleworld.blogspot.com/2013/04/stopped-dead-in-our-tracks-at-crescent.html

https://penelopepuddle.blogspot.com/2013/07/sleepy-stillness-broken-in-white-rock.html

https://penelopepuddleworld.blogspot.com/2014/01/locals-blow-whistle-on-monster-trains.html

https://penelopepuddleworld.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-ups-downs-about-fencing-in-white.html

https://penelopepuddleworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/paint-but-do-not-hammer-on-train-cars.html

Copyright by Penelope Puddlisms

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