Peace Arch News, November 28, 2013

Thursday November 28, 2013 (Vol. 38 No. 96)

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Good sports: Hundreds of people – including a veritable who’s-who of the B.C. sports scene – attended Tuesday’s Nite of Champions to support young athletes. i see page A5

S U R R E Y

w w w. p e a c e a r c h n e w s . c o m

Hundreds attend to hear mayors’ pitch for moving train tracks inland

Cities present four rail-route options Cloverdale wary of plan

Tracy Holmes Staff Reporter

It was standing-room-only at Tuesday’s community forum on railway safety, as more than 300 people packed the Pacific Inn in South Surrey to learn more about ongoing research into relocating the train tracks off the Semiahmoo Peninsula waterfront. Four possible options for realigning the BNSF tracks – including three that would move the line along routes east of 176 Street – were presented in what was described as an opportunity for public feedback. While most attendees appeared to be in favour of relocating the tracks, the possible new routes did not sit well with everyone. Anna Dean said she was “seeing red” at the suggestion to move the problem from one community to another. “We don’t want your problem in our neighbourhood,” Dean told a panel that included Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin and City of Surrey staff. “Whatever the alignment is, it will affect another neighbourhood.” While the idea of relocating the tracks is not new – it has been raised many times in recent decades – the cities’ officials said, and many attendees agreed, the time is right to push for making it a reality. “There is a much faster, safer and viable route available,” Baldwin told the crowd, to applause. “If we were starting from scratch, the present route would be the last we would take.” The issue of the line’s safety has been in the forefront in recent

Mud Bay Junction

Pratt Junction

Possible Alignments

Jennifer Lang Black Press

Original 1891 Alignment

City of Surrey graphic

City officials presented four possible options for relocating the BNSF train tracks off the Peninsula waterfront. months, following derailments in other areas of the country and the death of a White Rock jogger who was struck by a passenger train. Baldwin announced plans for the forum at last week’s White Rock council meeting, explaining Watts contacted him in August to invite his city’s participation in Surrey’s

efforts – an invitation Baldwin said added much-needed clout to the argument. “It wasn’t 20,000 people talking,” he said Tuesday, referring to White Rock’s population. “It was over half a million.… This is a great thing.” Watts noted 15 of the 19 kilometres of rail line eyed for re-align-

ment run through Surrey. From the border, it passes through the Douglas area, along four kilometres of White Rock’s coastline, then through Ocean Park and Crescent Beach before heading across Mud Bay and joining the main line at Colebrook Road. i see page A4

Will Cloverdale be asked to take more trains to benefit White Rock and ‘posh’ South Surrey neighbourhoods like Ocean Park and Crescent Beach? That’s the question Cloverdale residents are asking after the mayors of White Rock and Surrey revealed they’ve been privately talking for months about the possibility of rerouting the BNSF railway away from the waterfront. “Seems like this is caving to the rich folks,” Ginger Hartman writes on the Cloverdale Reporter newspaper’s Facebook page. Advocates of the plan cite the recent Lac-Mégantic oil disaster, the push to increase coal shipments, the slide-prone escarpment in Ocean Park and the state of a crumbling railway bridge over the Little Campbell River for seeking what they call a safer route. “There are significant safety issues,” Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts told Black Press. “No alignment has been selected. We are merely getting feedback from the community.” Donna Passmore, campaign director for the Farmland Defence League of B.C., said her group would “go to war” if rerouting the tracks meant alienating farmland. i see page A4

Transportation Safety Board releases report on 2012 air fatality

Fathers of plane-crash victims to compare notes The father of a former South Surrey resident who was killed in a plane crash near Kelowna a year ago has called a news conference to speak to findings in a report on the tragedy released this week by the Transportation Safety Board. Greg Sewell said he and the father of another victim from an unrelated crash will

BLACK FRIDAY

address media in an 11 a.m. event today (Thursday) at Hazelmere Country Club. “We feel that there’s a tie-in between the two incidents, a correlation that we think is worth pointing out,” Sewell told Peace Arch News. Sewell’s daughter, Lauren, died after the plane she and her boyfriend, Dallas Smith,

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the crash as a reduced rate of climb due to summer atmospheric conditions, fuel-flow problems, overloading and impaired visibility as a result of forest-fire smoke in the area. Wednesday, Sewell was not ready to discuss the report, but said there is “definitely things to learn from it.” – Alex Browne and Tracy Holmes

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were passengers in crashed into a wooded area on Aug. 13, 2012. Smith, a 30-year-old White Rock native, was pronounced dead at the scene, and 24-year-old Sewell, who grew up in the White Rock area, died in hospital two days after the crash. The TSB report names potential factors in

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