Bumpy crossing on the right track
You ask... We answer.
Q: The railway tracks by the St. Catharines Hospital are in very rough shape. In the six years we have lived in the area, the deterioration is so awful we avoid using them if possible. One could lose part of the undercarriage going over them. I see others slowing to a crawl just to get over them. Some infilling is needed! Who will fix this rutted crossing and when?
A: There’s good news for your undercarriage.
CN spokesman Alexandre Boulé says a rebuild of the crossing at First Street Louth is planned for this year and should be completed before the winter.
It’s one of 94 road crossing surfaces in Ontario that CN is rebuilding in 2019.
The City of St. Catharines’ transportation services has been working with CN for a while to address the bumpy issue as the railway owns the crossing and is responsible for it. There has been some patchwork here and there but the crossing is deteriorated.
The rebuild of the crossing will be part of $320 million that Boulé says CN is investing across the province this year to expand the company’s rail network.
That includes replacing more than 120 kilometres of rail and installing about 325,000 new railroad ties. There’s also maintenance work being done on bridges, culverts, signal systems and other track infrastructure.
Boulé said any citizen who has a concern about the condition of a railway crossing can contact CN’s public inquiry line by emailing contact@cn.ca or calling (888) 888-5909.
Q: There is a new stop sign at the corner of Merritt Street and Ball Avenue East in St. Catharines. Can you tell us why it is there and how much gas it wastes every year with stop and go traffic?
A: There’s no data on gas usage by drivers, but the stop sign was put in to discourage drivers from plowing into houses.
Brian Applebee, St. Catharines manager of transportation services, said there’s been a recurring collision problem at the intersection with vehicles heading north on Merritt Street, going down the hill, leaving the road at the curve and running into the houses to the north.
As reported in The Standard through the years, vehicles have gone through sections of guard rail and smashed into houses. The most memorable crash was in 2009 when a resident on Merritt Street had a car plow through the front of her home and end up in the living room — twice.
“Over the years, there have been various different things tried to help mitigate that — signing, speed limits, warning signs, all of the traditional more passive approaches to it — however the collisions continued,” Applebee said.
Applebee said a stop sign was installed on Merritt Street at the top of the hill before the curve as a means to have the vehicles slow down to an appropriate speed. He added there was essentially no other engineering technique at this time for mitigating the collision issue.
The city is looking in the longer-term at modifying the geometry of the intersection slightly to make it more traditional, but there are other challenges with drainage that would have to be looked into with any change.
Q: A number of local obituaries reference our hospital as the St Catharines General Hospital, but from everything I see in print from the Niagara Health System, it is only known as the Plain Jane name St. Catharines Site. Was there ever a plan to either name it the General II, or give it some nongeneric name, or corporate sponsorship that must have fallen through ?
A: The working name for the new hospital before it opened in 2013 was the Niagara Health System’s St. Catharines site and it seems to have stuck.
There was still talk in 2012 that another name might be chosen, particularly if a big donor came forward, but it wasn’t meant to be. The naming opportunity for the entire hospital at the time was for $15 million.
In 2014, the NHS told The Standard the naming opportunity was still available but the donation target was being reviewed and there was no longer a set price point.
The Niagara Health Foundation, which fundraises for the NHS’s five sites, would not say how much money would have to be donated for a re-naming to be considered today.
St. Catharines isn’t the only Niagara Health System “site.” The NHS calls all five of its locations “sites,” though locals generally still refer to the long-standing hospital names. Greater Niagara General Site in Niagara Falls, for instance, is usually referred to by residents as the Greater Niagara General Hospital or GNGH, just as St. Catharines residents often still refer to the St. Catharines General.
Send your queries to Karena Walter by email at karena.walter@niagaradailies.com; by Twitter @karena_standard or through Facebook at www.facebook.com/karenawalter