Customers do notice things like cleanliness. And some town residents are voters and shippers too.
The rail folks on here don’t believe in things like image, public relations, cooperation with communities, etc… For them it seems to be “We was here first. Get out of our way, NIMBYs.” Since railroads mostly haul large quantities, preferably by the trainload, the opinions of the public and smaller customers don’t count for much.
The rail hater folks on here don’t believe in things like appreciation or due respect, etc. They can only see things through their own perspective, and imagine that they surely know more about the subject than those who actually who for railroads. Call it the Woodrow Wilson phenomena.
You work in a lumber yard. What special knowledge do you have that gives you the right to call people who are not sycophants (aka A-Kers) “rail haters”? You really do not have a clue.
You seem to equate any criticism with being a “hater.” Ever hear of customers? Democracy? Having a thick skin?
The complaining drivers and the politicians forget that the railroads were there long before they were. In fact, were it not for the railroads, there might not be an Edmonton, or for that matter, any reason for those complaining to be there in the first place.
John Timm
Fair enough question I suppose. I don’t know what you do for a living, therefore, I’m not sure how to try to be condescending about your line of work in relation to other forum members.
Here is the clues I do have; You act like a troll on this message board. I don’t know if you mean to, but that’s the way it comes off. You word thing
Fair question. No condescension in my asking, but you chose to take it that way. You have no special knowledge, nor do I. Voicing criticisms, asking question
Emphasis mine - zug
Yeah, I see no way that could be misinterpreted as trolling. None whatsoever.
Now to bring this slightly on topic: is the city offering to help the situation in any way? Maybe trying to get other businesses to stagger shift times? Or is this a one way street sort of thing?
Another thread where incivility has won the day. I’ll be bailing out of this one, but before I go I’d like to remind everybody that the You can adopt an insincere, cloying, patronizing suck-up attitude and grin till your jaw muscles hurt, or you can just say, “@$#%R@W$ you.” Either way will get your meaning across, but neither one will get you closer to the solution to a problem — ANY problem. Courtesy, along with a sincere effort to see the other side’s point of view and work together to find a solution tends to work better IMO. I don’t see that happening here any more than I see it in Edmonton. Or maybe I’m just nuts. In any case, I’m outta here.
“In any case, I’m outta here.”
Can’t say I blame you. The trolling is getting out of hand again.
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As I said earlier, this is a 4 lane divided arterial street that is a main N-S connection. Because there is an E-W freeway about 1/2 mile south of the crossing, there are no other main N-S through crossings for a mile in either direction. Traffic exiting the freeway to come north has no good alternative around it that’s less than a 2-4 mile detour.
It is a major street. The real solution is to build an overpass, but that won’t happen for years even everybody kissed and made up today.
Figuring out the streets is easy, the hard part is figuring out is what work is being done at the yard, when and what density of rail traffic is there through this area.
The whole thing’s problem is Edmondton 's foresight devolving into hindsight.
This did not happen overnight. Some traffic planners (oxymoron) missed the boat and their political bosses egoes just shot themselves in the collective foot. (4 lane divided arterial crossing a yard approach didn’t raise a flag? - huh?what?)
Over here on this side of the border, my experience tells me that in these cases, there is a three sigma chance that the roadway agency and their leadership are gonna shoot first and think later. In this state, there is a city and county that has already put itself on the blacklist of the state regulatory agency that handles road crossing issues as the administrative law judge.
The road planners must have listened to the Real Estate people - ‘They never run trains and even if they do - they are going out of business soon!’
In Edmonton and with other such situations, the railroad can always try sweet reason first. Because, as is often remarked, most people really don’t have a clue about railroad operations. In our town, where quiet rail has been under discussion, one letter-writer offered as a solution that the rails operate only in daylight hours, when their horns won’t wake people up!
That would work.
After an attempt to explain, though, the railroad must insist upon its rights. Edmonton is one way station on a long, long journey with many customers and considerations besides Edmonton and its convenience.
Here, where I live, the main lead south out of 2 small to middling sized industry and interchange yards runs through the downtown area across about every east-west city street. Several years ago, many motorists were complaining about the traffic blockages during the 2 ‘rush hours’ (morning and evening). There were the usual city ordinances about not blocking a grade crossing for more than 5 minutes and police were attempting to ticket the train Engineers for blocking streets. This caused arguments about who had jurisdiction over what a RR can do in cities and what cities can require of a RR, and whether a city police officer can legally board a locomotive to issue the ticket. And there were questions of who was responsible for the ticket; the Engineer, Conductor, the Yard Master or the RR in general.
Train cars are pulled out of the yard and pushed back to additional tracks of cars to build a train. As it gets longer, more city streets are blocked and the 1st couple of streets are then blocked for progressively longer periods. Once the train is complete, it is pulled out of the yard, past a switch to the line that goes to the main RR yard (and mainline) out near the edge of town. Then the yard engine is uncoupled and a road engine is coupled to the other end and takes the train away to the main RR yard. That last operation can take a very long time.
Most motorists have no idea why the train comes out of the yard, stops and the returns to the yard (“What happened, did the Ingineer ferget him’s lunch bucket?”) or why it moves so slow (“Whatsa matter; didn’t they feed the chipmunks this week?”) and why takes so long (“The Ingineer is jus’ sittin’ in the cab… What is this, his ‘break-time’?”).
We, here, have an understanding that you don’t do road speeds while coupling cars and that it takes time to couple cars and attach the brake lines a
What you have here are yard tracks serving what is known as “Refinery Row”, one of the biggest petroleum and petro-chemical processing sites in North America north of Houston. Canada has bigger refineries, but they pretty much all have Atlantic Ocean access to receive overseas oil.
This is a 24/7 operation, so there is no good time to stop trains for cars to cross the tracks. Edmonton, like all of Alberta, has experienced huge population growth since the oil boom started here in 1947. The refineries were built where it was thought they wouldn’t bother anybody, but Edmonton has grown eastward right out to the western edge of Refinery Row, and Sherwood Park has expanded west right up to the eastern edge. The order was Nothing>Railways>Refineries>Cities. The only rational solution is an overpass.
But you know, there is an underlying anti-oil tone to this whole story, of which we have heard much on this forum. If only people would use green energy, then we wouldn’t have to have those nasty refineries. Which raises the question nobody ever follows through on, what would all those people be doing in Edmonton? Not to mention Sherwood Park.
Bruce
Sorry, double post.
Just a quick note, that’s not really the yard that causes too many problems. It’s the blocking of the grade crossings south of the yard in Old Strathcona. The line feeding that yard, and incidentally, this yard as well, runs parallel to one of the main north south feeder roads for the south half of the city.
That yard may cause some delays, but they are really negligible compared to the traffic tie ups from activity on the main north south line into and out of the city. In fact, the real delays come from switching along this line, not really even from the yard.