The day when Maple Ridge no longer hears the routine horns of CP Rail freight trains is drawing near.
Darrell Denton, with the city, said Thursday that Maple Ridge has finished all of its engineering work and installed the security fences required along the track at the Port Haney and Maple Meadows stations of the West Coast Express.
With those measures complete, the city is awaiting the one-month notification from CP Rail that it intends to stop routinely sounding horns when trains pass crossings in Maple Ridge.
Horns will still be sounded, though, if engineers see someone on the track.
“My understanding is that CP Rail is currently completing its final signage works and when this work is complete, we can expect to receive formal notice along with Transport Canada,” Denton said.
City council voted in September to stop the train horns after signing on to Transport Canada’s whistle cessation program.
To allow trains to stop sounding their horns, however, some crossings had to be improved, in particular those at Port Haney and Maple Meadows Way. That required installation of 1.8-metre-high security fences at both spots, at a cost of about $40,000, to prevent people from crossing the track.
Residents near the West Coast Express train station also started a petition last year, calling for the horns to stop. One of the organizers has since moved to Langley to escape the noise.
The city started the train whistle cessation process in 2017.
A woman was killed on the tracks just west of the Port Haney station last Nov. 14.