Councillor wants to silence looming train whistle blasts for north Saskatoon residents

Ninety-six-decibel train whistle blasts could soon be disturbing residents of neighbourhoods in north Saskatoon in an ironic twist to the solution for a longstanding safety concern.

A special Saskatoon city council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to consider a request to stop the whistles from CN Rail trains at Saskatoon’s first pedestrian/cyclist railway crossing, which is expected to be completed this week.

The crossing was built to address illegal traversing of the railway tracks as seen in well-worn dirt paths leading to the tracks that run parallel to Warman Road.

Coun. Randy Donauer, who represents the nearby neighbourhoods of River Heights and Richmond Heights, said Monday he wants to delay the opening of the crossing, despite the long time it took to get it installed.

“[Warning whistles] will wake people, like thousands of people, up in the night when those trains are going through,” Donauer said in an interview.

Transport Canada rules require trains to blow whistles of at least 96 decibels within 400 metres of ground-level pedestrian crossings and continue until the engine reaches the crossing or whenever a person is spotted on or near train tracks.

Donauer asked city hall’s general manager of transportation and construction Terry Schmidt at last week’s council meeting how long it will take to approve a request to silence the whistles at a crossing after a municipality has indicated it wants the warnings to stop. Schmidt told him it will take a month.

Donauer said he plans to ask Tuesday whether the crossing’s opening can be delayed until after Transport Canada and CN Rail sign off on stopping the whistles.

“I’d like to get the crossing open, but at this point, I’d rather wait another couple weeks until we have the whistle cessation order before we open the crossing legally,” he said.

The crossing, which would be the first of its kind in Saskatoon for pedestrians and cyclists only, was established to solve the lack of any sort of pedestrian/cyclist crossing of the CN tracks just west of Warman Road from 33rd Street East to 51st Street — a stretch of 3.5 kilometres.

The crossing is located along Warman Road between Assiniboine Drive on the east side of the railway and 43rd Street East on the west side. It will provide a legal connection for people in the residential neighbourhoods on the east side of the tracks to the North Industrial area on the west side.

Donauer said a similar issue arose when Marquis Drive was extended to connect to the Chief Mistawasis Bridge in 2018. Train whistles started to be blown approaching that crossing, he recalled.

The whistles were “very intrusive” to residents in Donauer’s ward, he said, even though that location is nearly a kilometre from the nearest residential neighbourhood. Council got the whistles stopped at that location.

The issues along the stretch where the crossing will be located began when CN began to express concern about the number of people crossing the tracks. Donauer first asked city administration for a solution to the lack of a pedestrian/cyclist rail crossing in early 2018.