I'd like to come back to this issue of railway noise in high-density areas. I represent an area of the greater Vancouver area, downtown New Westminster, where rail shunting yards established many years ago are now very close to a lot of recently built high-density apartments and condos.
One of the witnesses we had from the area testified that when we have a roadway and afterwards a school is built, there are restrictions on the roadway. We lower the speed limit, and we make sure that trucks can't travel on that stretch of roadway. We do this in other transportation modes as well. If the population or the area has changed, we impose restrictions.
I'd like to come back to the issue of what kinds of restrictions would be appropriate to put on railways operating shunting yards in high-density areas. There seem to be two schools of thought that have come forward in testimony. One is that we restrict certain types of activities. This includes your suggestion, Mr. Gow, that we use certain types of technology to restrict activities from those shunting yards. In the case of New Westminster, this would mean that a lot of those shunting activities would go out to the Port Mann shunting yard, where there's no habitation. Another possibility is to restrict the hours of activity, so that rail lines would be restricted in their activities during business hours or during the day.
I'd like to hear from both of you whether you see any problems with either one of these approaches. If so, what might those problems be? Where railways are operating shunting yards or rail lines in high-density areas, would you prefer to restrict activities or hours of operation?