Rail side trail won’t be tolerated: residents

At least some neighbouring residents are adamant that a proposed 1.2-kilometre section of trail beside the town’s railway tracks not be built, and that any discussion on the issue is pointless.

The section in question runs between Town Line and John Street and, at Monday night’s public council meeting, Town Line resident Chris McCoy took advantage of the question period to deliver a tongue-lashing to the Orangeville Trailways Committee.

During her speech, she questioned the honesty and integrity of the committee in regards to its financial dealings and claimed that 90 per cent of the local residents who attended a Jan. 21 Trailways Committee meeting were opposed to the project.

“I understand trails,” she told council, “their benefits and also their challenges.

“I don’t see this trail as being safe or for four-season use.”

She concluded her remarks by saying she was “sickened” by the

519-

committee’s decision to keep $75,000 which she said was mistakenly allocated its way in the 2010 budget.

The funds were included, perhaps inadvertently, in the preliminary budget. Council discussed this money during its budget deliberations and eventually agreed that recreation was important and the funding allocation was appropriate.

Councillor Sylvia Bradley, who also sits on the Trailways Committee, explained in an interview that, in 2009, $75,000 was budgeted by council as “seed money” to help in a bid for a provincial grant that was successful.

She said Bill McKennan, who was preparing his first budget as town treasurer, might have assumed this amount was an annual allocation to the trails committee. Thus, talk of taking advantage of a mistake was aired, in a non-serious manner, at the Jan. 21 meeting.

It was decided that $50,000 would be put towards paving the George Douglas trail and the rest put aside for other reasons.

When informed of this chain of events Tuesday night, Ms. McCoy maintained her stance and further accused the committee of “devious and underhanded” behaviour.

Committee chair Bernadette Hardaker had assumed the committee and the concerned residents had established a rapport and she had met and discussed the issue with Ms. McCoy after the meeting.

Having not attended Monday’s council meeting and unaware of the content of Ms. McCoy’s attack until watching it on television, Ms. Hardaker was noticeably taken aback when contacted Tuesday.

She said she was not immediately in a position to comment on Ms. McCoy’s remarks. “We’re putting data together and we want to have a response for the next committee meeting, based on the information we can gather,” she said.

Ms. McCoy said in an interview that other sections of the proposed Rail-With-Trail (RWT) – which would run through Kay-Cee Gardens and past the Orangeville Seniors

Centre – were feasible,

since there was an

acceptable space

between the planned trail and the railway

tracks.

She added that, under

no circumstances, could

she support a trail between

Town Line and John Street.

“I would co-operate,” she

said, “if there was a 25-metre setback, which can’t physically be done in this neighbourhood.”

Her opposition was echoed in an e-mail from fellow resident Steven Szabo, who said the established, historic layout of the area was unsuitable for trails.

“The portion of the railway corridor proposed to accommodate the Rail Trail is within a historic residential portion of town,” Mr. Szabo wrote. “The construction of many of the homes in this area can be dated prior to the late 1800s. These homes form both boundaries of the rail corridor. Homes on Mill St. and Margaret St. back onto this railway and by the nature of their fenced yards create an existing corridor.

“As a result of the construction of this proposed Rail Trail, the existing natural corridor will transform into an alley between Town Line and Church St., creating a tunnel-like effect with no access for a continuous distance of approximately 700 metres.

This section of the trail FURNA CE woul d become barricaded by the existing property owner’s fences, essentially “trapping” users for a significant distance.”

To accentuate his point, Mr. Szabo provided statistics from Safe Kids USA which said that, in 2008, 122 children were injured by trains, and 22 children under the age of 14 were killed in incidents involving trains in the United States.

(In comparison, an American motor vehicle accident monitoring agency, Fatality Analysis Reporting System, reported that, in 2008, 1,045 children under 13 and 4,054 teenagers died in traffic accidents in the U.S.).

In addition, Ms. McCoy warned of trail users being hurt or killed by rail cars toppling onto the trail after a train derailment and people suffering from heart attacks as a result of stress caused by being in close proximity of large and noisy trains.

Both Ms. McCoy and Mr. Szabo mentioned the safety consequences of a pending sale of the local railroad by the town to the Highland Railway Group, saying that trains will get longer, more frequent and faster.

At the last committee meeting, Orangeville planning director James Stiver explained that the train speed when passing through Orangeville is determined by the layout of the tracks and shouldn’t allow for trains to move at higher speeds.

“Just because longer trains may be coming,” he

added, “doesn’t mean they will be faster.” SALE