GO Transit has agreed to stop the use of loud horns in a Unionville neighborhood, less than three weeks after reviving the practice following a safety incident.
Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti made the announcement on social media on Wednesday night, noting that the horns would stop blaring as of 3 a.m. on Thursday.
“A big thanks to @Metrolinx and @cityofmarkham staff to ensure the crossing is safe & for the steps taken to rectify the situation,” Scarpitti said.
Some residents in the neighbourhood near a GO Train crossing at Eureka Street previously spent six years pushing for the horns to be silenced as trains passed through the area.
The community was successful and the trains were silenced back in 2020.
However, due to an incident on Dec. 23 involving a street sweeper vehicle at the Eureka Street crossing near Unionville, Markham, Metrolinx decided to temporarily reinstate whistle blowing.
That caused considerable concern among community members.
“We now have 34 trains running a day, from five in the morning till past midnight,” Shanta Sundarason the founder of Stop the Horns, told CTV News Toronto last week. “On New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day we had trains going right up till 3 a.m.”
According to the City of Markham’s website, anti-whistling had been implemented at 15 public crossings in the city, including Eureka Street. That is until the incident occurred.
“I cannot fathom why they re-instated the horns due to an isolated incident and not because the crossing is, or has been a danger in general,” Sundarason said.
Markham Ward 3 councillor Reid McAlpine wrote in an email to CTV News last week that while all details of the incident were not yet clear, it seemed the issue was driver error.
A meeting was held between Metrolinx, the City of Markham, and the developer on Jan. 2 to discuss upgrades to the level crossing, McAlpine said.
Metrolinx asked for improved signage, enhanced staff, and contractor training along with a transportation management plan from the developer before silencing the horns, he said.
“I appreciate how upsetting and frustrating this is for the residents immediately adjacent to the site, especially after so much effort and expense by the residents and the city to upgrade level crossings across the city some years ago, so that the horns could be silenced in the first place,” McAlpine said last week, prior to the decision to again silence the horns.
Metrolinx previously called the incident “a near miss” and said they were undertaking a full-scale safety assessment with safety measures in place while that assessment was conducted.
“This includes reinstating the requirement for train whistles at this crossing.” they said.
Community protested return of horns
Sundarason said that as a result of the decision to reinstate whistle blowing, 34 to 40 horns were being heard at the crossing every day for the last weeks.
Nick Pandit, who has been a resident of a senior’s home in Unionville for six years, also expressed frustration with the situation in a separate interview with CTV News Toronto.
He called the noise “excessive, unnecessary and disruptive to the way one conducts one’s life.”
“This is unacceptable. This is not warranted punishment,” Pandit says. “The residents in this building have done nothing wrong and yet they’re being punished by the sound of these horns because of bureaucracy…”