Assiniboia welcomes Weyburn Red Wings with open arms during ammonia shutdown
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Railway crossings through busy Saskatoon neighbourhoods seem to be a constant source of complaints for drivers.
On Wednesday morning, drivers dealt with long delays at 25th Street and Idylwyld Drive when the flashing lights and arms were triggered even though a train wasn’t crossing.
Mayor Charlie Clark told 650 CKOM Canadian Pacific has a crossing protection system in place in case a fault is detected.
“They put (the arms) down to protect motorists in the area,” Clark explained. “The good thing is when there is a fault, they have a system in place. The bad thing is, in this case, it happened to disrupt the morning commute.”
The drive home Wednesday evening wasn’t much better as crews began doing work at the downtown intersection around the tracks.
Clark said there isn’t an easy way to address concerns with the tracks, especially when it comes to moving them.
“I’m not under the illusion that that’s something that will get resolved by next year. This is a big complicated piece,” he said.
City administration most recently discussed the idea of moving the tracks in late 2019.
At that time, the city asked CP to consider sharing Canadian National’s mainline which travels south of Saskatoon.
“The complexity of a project like that is daunting,” Clark said Thursday. “The ability to figure out the routing of that (rail line) would be (an issue) and how to do that in a way where the cost would be borne by rail lines and other levels of government is the only way that could happen.”
Talks are ongoing between the city and railways to look at the big-picture strategy as the population grows and traffic changes, according to Clark.