Dear Editor: Here's another dumb idea to annoy B.C. voters: www.theprovince.com/news/Harbour+official+so unds+alarm+over+Rail+plan+bridge+staff/866325 4/story.html.
To remove the operator from this Second Narrows rail bridge sounds like lunacy - and to replace it with a remote control room in New Westminster - who makes this stuff up? This could be a new "Keystone Kops" chapter, a la Kalamazoo.
How many air traffic control centres have been consolidated lately? Visual control seems to me to be vital. Come on, Mr. Harper, first the Vancouver Coast Guard silly decision and now this - at least get your Ottawa experts to review this one and show the "justification" for yet another dumb idea! OK?
I read that CN has decided, without public or community involvement, to remotely operate the Second Narrows CN rail bridge from New Westminster.
I ask, why not Spuzzum? You can't make this stuff up.
What is particularly interesting to me is a recent story about CN Rail bridge operator Tony Au, posted on CN's website.
"'Tony's ability to juggle the incoming rail and marine traffic ... that kind of precise coordination actually requires meticulous attention,' points out plant maintenance supervisor Don Brears."
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but when I searched that the CN link today, I was told, "page not found."
Things seem to get stranger and stranger - we are required to have a months or years-long public hearing debate about a pipeline; seems like a good idea to allow the public to have their say. But when it comes to shipping bitumen and operating vital bridges or coast guard facilities, the boys in the backroom discuss the issue and Bob's your uncle; "it's decided."
Transportation and energy systems are vital, and all of us do benefit, but the community must be allowed to decide how best to accommodate those facilities.
We can only hope the New Westminster bridge control room operator is as good a juggler as was Tony Au.
I tried to find an email address for CN - ha ha! No luck.
Carl Shalansky
P.Eng (retired), via email
