“When I was shown this place, I was told there are cruise ships and trains,” says Amal Ghazal of her Barrington Street apartment. “I thought, that’s nice. I want to live in a busy city, with lots going on. But I didn’t expect this.”
“This” is the Via train parked across the street from her apartment building, all night long, with the the engine running to keep the air brakes on. Via started parking the train there about five years ago, says Ghazal’s downstairs neighbour, Robert Donovan. And since the recent schedule change the train has been adjacent to the residential area 100 hours or more each week.
“Summer is bad, because you can’t sleep with the windows open,” says Ghazal. She says a black soot covers her balcony and furniture. “At Christmastime, they left the train here the entire time, a week.”
When The Coast observed it last Sunday, the train engine was parked immediately atop the pedestrian tunnel across from Ghazal’s and Donovan’s building. The engine was so loud it was impossible to have a normal conversation on the street. Tuesday, the train was closer to the station, and less loud inside Ghazal’s apartment, but still annoying. When Ghazal closed her windows, the sound was somewhat muffled but even more unsettling.
It is exactly the arbitrariness of the noise that is most disturbing, says Donovan. “Last night, they turned it off at 8:30, but then they turned it back on at 1am.” They move the train around, he says, so there doesn’t appear to be any reason why it has to be next to the apartments. “They could move it 200 meters down and it’d be in an industrial area.”
Via has been unresponsive to their complaints, says Donovan. The company also did not return a call from The Coast.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2013.
Another perverted sense of entitlement. You moved in knowing there was a train yard there. I had a house on Chebucto for two years, but did I call the paper about the noise? Nope, because I voluntarily moved into a noisy area.
This is journalism at its best- Living by trains is loud.
I am disappointed that the author of this piece did not take the time to check some very simple facts. In the article, it says “since the recent schedule change the train has been adjacent to the residential area 100 hours or more each week” – this is far from the truth. With the new schedule, the train departs 3 days each week. It arrives Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and leaves the next day. With an arrival time of 5:18pm and a departure of 12:20pm the next day, that means the train is in Halifax for just 19 hours at a time. At three times a week, that only adds up to 57 hours. That’s only half the time the article suggests. The schedule change dropped the train from running 6 days a week to 3, so it has in fact considerably reduced the amount of time the train will be there rather than increasing it.
In that sense, Ms. Ghazal and Mr. Donovan should be grateful that the new schedule, as much of an inconvenience as it is to the travelling public, means they only have to hear the train running half as often! I’m also not sure about the claim that it started 5 years ago, as VIA has been parking its trains on its station tracks for many years longer than that.
When the train arrives, it pulls directly into the station (so the locomotives are farther away from the residential area in question). After unloading passengers and refuelling, the train is turned on the balloon track at the Halterm container terminal and backs into the station. This leaves the locomotives adjacent to the residential area overnight through until they depart at noon the next day. With regard to the seeming “arbitrariness” of the locomotive shutting down and restarting, this is the result of the auto-start/stop system these locomotives are equipped with. It ensures that the locomotives remain running enough to maintain certain necessary systems, but shuts them down enough to maintain maximum fuel efficiency. No one is walking out to the train and starting these locomotives up in the middle of the night just to annoy people.
Additionally, the locomotives do not run at full intensity all night long, but do so shortly before departure. The Coast observed the train last Sunday; since the train leaves at 12:20pm on Sunday, this would have been while they were preparing for departure, and the engines would have been running fully to prepare them and check systems prior to leaving. Yes, they’re very loud at that time, but that isn’t necessarily indicative of their volume level throughout the rest of their stay.
With regard to moving the train, there is a reason VIA cannot just leave the train wherever they like. VIA is extremely restricted in where it can actually leave its trains. For one thing, the train needs to be adjacent to the station so that crews can access the train to clean, maintain, and prepare it for the next day (the cars also require being hooked up to power cables at the station, so that the locomotives don’t need to run at even higher intensity for the whole time to keep the lights and ventilation working!). The other big reason – the track 200 metres down the road, which Mr. Donovan refers to, is owned (and used regularly) by CN, and it’s not so simple as just moving the train down there. It should also be noted that there are also homes near the tracks farther down the way (towards Young Ave, for example), so moving it would only shift the problem to others.
Finally, I’m a little confused about the problem here. First of all, when moving to a new place, it it not the tenant’s responsibility to find out what sort of noise levels there will be? Did Ms. Ghazal never visit the place before while the train was actually there? Or ask someone else about how loud it got? If you were shown a place next to a busy construction site in the evening when no work was going on, would you not either ask how loud it got or return when the workers were actually there, rather than simply moving in anyway and complaining when the construction actually got underway? The reality is, there are homes located next to lots of noisy places and things, and unfortunately many of these noises are a necessity that can’t be stopped merely to please their neighbours.
Ha ha, The Coast should know better than to post random shit about trains with a trainspotter on watch.
There are other noise issues to tenants in Halifax which are newsworthy. Did you ever have jackhammering in your basement for months at a time? How about the landlord who tells you that slipping a piece of paper under your door serves as consent to the same? And that you can’t be released from your lease if they are working for months at a time?
http://youtu.be/7xNQszz4SBI
Harbourview on Brunswick Street has been extensively renovated, but at the expense of current tenants.
The first sentence completely invalidates the stance taken in the rest of the article.
Local trash news at it’s finest.
Seriously? You want to “live in a busy city with lots going on” BUT there can’t be any noise? I don’t know what kind of a city that would be.
Man Bites Dog, Film at 11.
Such nasty comments. The point of the article is that the trains are left running all night. I live close by train tracks too; that doesn’t mean I consent to be kept awake all night. There is a by-law stating that noise is not permitted after specific hours.
@Halifax resident – Yes, there is a bylaw (HRM Bylaw N-200 “Respecting Noise”), and it is a lot more nuanced than simply prohibiting noise after certain hours. There are many exceptions to the rules. Rail locomotives do not fall under the definition of a motor vehicle within the bylaw, and are thus exempt from the prohibitions relating to motor vehicles. There is a limit on the hours during which rail equipment can make noise, but it applies *only* to equipment on property *not* owned/operated by a railway governed by the Canada Railway Act. Since both VIA and CN fall are recognized federal railway companies and the train is parked on their tracks, noises that are a necessary part of their operations are permitted under the bylaw. (You can see it for yourself here, if you’d like: http://halifax.ca/legislation/bylaws/hrm/d…)
Of course the comments are nasty. What the fuck do you expect when The Coast presents such a trivial and poorly researched “story” in their paper(not entirely their fault, though, they did call VIA at least once)? Its like reading about people bitching about road expansion when they live beside one of three ways to get onto the peninsula….
Amal Ghazal has a valid point no matter what has been said in the many immature hostile written diarrhea responding to the article in The Coast.
Noise is noise and when it comes to excessive noise in the city, there are two set of rules. The citizen always looses while the greedy money grabbing giants from most industries and especially railway companies always win and get away with murder. Ask anyone from Lac-Megantic.
The same goes with air pollution, which include noise by the way. Engines running idle for extended periods in order to have the brakes on? Again two sets of rules. It is more than past the time to use another way to secure the trains. Ask again anyone from Lac-Megantic.
The train situation in HRM is unacceptable. Because it has been like that for a long time doesn’t make it right.
@peace: linking Lac-Megantic to this makes you sound like a pretentious prick who grasps at straws to complain about anything possible. This is a story about poor judgement and foresight on behalf of the tenant, plain and simple.
Get over yourself.
@ robostomp How is this nothing more than “poor judgement and foresight by the tenant” as you put it? The train did not keep tenants awake all night when the woman moved in there. As explained in the article, the all-night noise began fairly recently. How could she have predicted this? The comments section on this story sheds much light on what a nasty city this place has become. Halifax sucks not because of anything the railway does, but because of the sniping mean-spirited
attitudes of so many of its residents. I’m sure the woman in the story is sorry she ever chose to live here.
She shouldn’t regret living here, she should regret letting someone make a story out of her unfortunate situation. I’m sure she isn’t the only person living in the building, maybe they should talk to the owner of the building and see if that person gives enough of a fuck to actually do something about it, like maybe contact VIA rail?
I know the area very well and the woman lives in the building which is closer to Mitchell St than Barrington. The tracks are across the parking lot, Barrington street and a grassy strip with trees. There is a building across from her which sits just above the tracks (30-50 feet) directly on Barrington. No issues or complaints from them and they live DIRECTLY beside the tracks. Then there’s the apartment building on Ogilvie which has been there my entire life. They have no complaints and its been there for decades. Even when the train yard was actually full and busy.
Thats thousands of people who live/lived there with no whining.
Then as Tim H pointed out, the whole noise issue was grossly exaggerated and not investigated by the reporter. She’s a whiner and a liar that exaggerated her problem. But even then, she voluntarily made it her problem because you know, she can always move. Or, just not move in next to a train yard. But, knowing the area it sounds like she wanted a harbour veiw apartment with cheap rent.
I live in a part of Calgary near train yards, busy tracks, and under a flight path, and my rent is cheaper than downtown. When you live in certain parts of a city you deal with certain things you won’t in the country. Some people need to shut the fuck up and get out of the city.
Um, if you’ve been there since (at least) christmas, your option to give 2 (or is it 3, its been so long) months notice and be out of there has either come and gone or is fast approaching. Here is a place and you can still walk to the market and dal… http://www.killamproperties.com/apartments…
The trains have a right to be there; the legislation is grandfathered.
The train did start up last week at 1 am, and it was at about 80% of full volume. The problem has gotten unbearable in the last 6 months. We have been here for 5 years, and now it is too much. People who don’t live in this neighbourhood should keep their asinine comments to themselves. Tim H was not here last week to be blasted out of bed at 1 am, so he should keep his trap shut.
We will be moving soon. Pointless to complain.
The Harley riders with their mid-life crises and straight pipes. … That is something the city should do something about… Absolute assholes.
And by the way, the rent is NOT cheap. Clueless fuckers.
@You don’t live here: “Tim H was not here last week to be blasted out of bed at 1 am, so he should keep his trap shut.” – I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but I really did nothing but point out some simple facts that were either not mentioned or misrepresented in the article. If there’s anything I’ve said that you wish to take issue with, then please, go right ahead and point it out. Whether I was there or not really has no bearing on whether what I’ve said is true.
A simpler question: Is there an alternative to leaving the trains running for a day or more at a time? This seems a waste of fuel and is unnecessarily noisy. Many of the train engines are parked with their engines not running, so why these?
As for grandfathering or “It was already there” why not make the downtown a better place to live? We are steadily improving all kinds of health standards (lead paint, car mufflers, lead in gasoline), so why not reduce the air and noise pollution downtown?
Would you say to people who live in Sydney that they should just live with the tar ponds?
Over the last few days there has been an improvement in the train noises. Thank you.