The process the CTA goes through to come to these judgments is exhaustive. I've been involved in a number of them personally. They go out, hold public hearings, see witnesses; they do all of those sorts of things before they arrive at a judgment. And it is a judgment: it's a very quasi-judicial type of process. They can order us to do things, and they do quite often.
The advantage of that approach, as opposed to a number, is that it allows a process of analysis to be gone through whereby you can come to a reasonable judgment as to what is reasonable from a noise management point of view and what is not. It is an entirely different situation, for example, if you're dealing with an issue in a highly dense urban area, as opposed to where there's been condo development all around the proximity of the tracks and whatnot, or where you're dealing with an issue that is perhaps a yard operation somewhat adjacent to an urban setting but quite a bit further off, or where you're dealing with an issue in more of a rural environment.
It's very difficult for me to conceive of how anyone could reasonably set a number in all of the different areas and permutations and combinations. I think what is being proposed is by far the most fair and the most effective way to deal with these issues.
I need to reinforce again, sir, that it is our intention in managing noise to get before the CTA as few times as humanly possible. It is not in our best interests to have bad community relations. We want to have good community relations, and noise and other proximity issues, and working with our colleagues at FCM and others, is the right way to go. So I would strongly urge the committee not to impose too prescriptive an approach on decibels and noise, because I think you will find very quickly that it becomes very unmanageable across the country.