Editor:
Pity the new home buyers in White Rock these days. Especially any home below Roper Avenue, or perhaps even as high as Thrift, that are subject to ever louder and more intrusive and piercing horn blasts that frankly seem to have no relation to what is occurring on the tracks.
Fooled into believing White Rock is an idyllic seaside town, their surprise on their first night in their new home must be eye-opening – literally.
How can these decibel-blasting, thunderous horns be justified at 3 a.m.? 4 a.m.? 5 a.m.? Even at 9 a.m. or throughout the day – to be on the horn for long blasts from one end of White Rock to the other is ludicrous. Most astonishing – the horns appear to be blasting more frequently throughout the night than the daytime, sometimes lasting the length of time for the train to get from one end of White Rock to the other. What bogeymen are on the tracks that these train engineers see that White Rock residents do not? I cannot imagine this happens in Vancouver – the residents would not stand for it. Yet in White Rock, it goes on relentlessly.
Apparently, this decision may have come because of a death on the tracks a few years ago. With all due respect and much sympathy to the family, what was that person doing on active train tracks anyway? Must we become the nanny state and demand horn blasts to clear the way in case some other poor soul is standing or jogging in the way of a train? Where is common sense in all of this? Where is the peaceful enjoyment of one’s home? Where on earth are council members who can lobby whichever bureaucratic department decided these horn blasts were a good thing to change their decision? Where, oh where, has peaceful, commonsense White Rock gone?
Sorry White Rock, we are moving on to quieter places. And I suspect many new homebuyers will turn right around and move along in no time also if nothing is done to change the status quo.
Alison Prentice, White Rock