County Unaware of Transport Canada Report

Friday, 15 April 2016 13:45

Oxford County has a few questions they would like to ask Transport Canada.

According to statistics from Transport Canada 11 of the highest risk railway crossings in Canada are right here in Oxford County.

Director of Public Works Robert Walton tells Heart FM they are not surprised by the number, however they didn't know about the Transport Canada list until they saw it reported in the CBC.

"A few things that we certainly have questions about and I'm sure through our associations will get asked because every municipality that is listed here will have the same questions. We are interested in how the report was developed in the first place and how they are going about their business and what their strategy is to improve crossings.

Walton says railway safety is a concern in Oxford and they are taking steps to address that.

"8 or 9 years ago in Ingersoll we worked with the Town and actually uploaded Ingersoll Street from the Town to the County and through a grant application got money to do the Ingersoll Street extension, which was two bridges actually, one was a grade separation through CN rail and the other one was a grade separation through the Thames river and closed two kilometres of road to make that happen. Ingersoll at the time had no grade separation, so anytime there was train movement there that blocked off the crossings and if you had another emergency there was no way for the emergency responders to get across town, so that was a huge safety improvement."

The most dangerous railway crossing in Oxford was on Wilson Street in Woodstock which ranks 48th overall nationally. Here are the rest of the crossings that cracked the top 500 list.

- Thames Street in Ingersoll

- Mutual Street in Ingersoll

- County Road 22 in Blandford Blenheim Township

- Main Street N in Blandford Blenheim Township

- Beards Lane in Woodstock

- County Road 29 in Blandford BlenheimTownship

- Pemberton Street Ingersoll