Going Electric in Metrolinxland

The Clean Air for Little Lungs Stroller Parade was a resounding success!  450+ parents, toddlers, caregivers, supporters and grandmothers showed up to strut their stuff to Soli and Rob performing such classics as 'Peee...Uuuu...Metrolinx Stinx' and electrified variations of childhood favourites, 'Electric Avenue' and 'Dalton Blow your Horn', as well as their own anthem, 'Go Electric'.  

Thank you to all who took time from their busy schedule to say 'no' to childhood asthma and diminished lung capacity.  Your collective show of will is heartwarming and courageous in the face of an arm's length provincial agency, Metrolinx, which thinks that honouring a 1999 contract with SNC-Lavalin to run over 140 diesel trains for the Union-Pearson Rail Link through our neighbourhoods daily is more important than your children's health.  We will win this outrageous contest of wills, and corporate backroom gladhanding, and this demonstration was ten large baby steps in the right direction.  

During the speeches, Dr. Ian Clarke, from Sick Kids, said that the synergistic combination of nitrous oxide and particulate matter from diesel emissions would be 354% higher than permissible environmental standards.  When he asked Metrolinx why they had not studied electric trains rather than diesel during one of their Open Houses, they said "Why would we do that?  Everyone knows that electric trains are better for the environment." 

In particular, electric trains are much better for the lungs of young children as they have no toxic emissions. Children breathe twice as quickly as adults as their metabolism is twice as fast. As a result, the development of their lung capacity is curtailed by the absorption of fine particulate matter from diesel emissions during their childhood for the remainder of their lifespan. In the words of Sophia Wong, one of the organizers of the Clean Air Little Lungs Parade, (and I have to admit, I was one of the others), "My child is two now. In fifteen years, when this rail corridor is slated to be electrified, and my child is seventeen, when he says that he is going to play soccer, I will have to remind him to take his puffer- if he can play soccer at all due to his asthma." 

Meanwhile, our tax money has just paid for an 800 page analysis by Intrinsik, an environmental consulting firm, which says that the airshed of 300 000 people 'in the strike corridor' will be poisoned within legal limitations.  After the cover page of their Air Quality Assessment Report as commissioned by Metrolinx, there is a disclaimer by Intrinsik stating that they cannot be held legally liable for the content of this report.  Who wrote this disclaimer - the Red Queen from 'Alice in Wonderland'?  This disclaimer, for me, says it all - Metrolinx will not be held responsible for polluting the lungs of the residents of Toronto as they are, first and foremost, a corporate entity fulfilling their corporate contracts and provincial mandate to save money in every way possible by implementing retrofitted diesel trains from the 1950s for the UPRL.  Strike corridor, indeed, as we will breathe daily this airshed's adverse effects.  Is this really a term generated from an Air Quality Assessment Report that is designed to protect the health of citizens, Premier McGuinty? 

My second favourite Alice in Wonderland remark, other than the disclaimer by Intrinsik, is the quote by Brian Peltier, Metrolinx's executive lead of this project, published in The Sun, stating "That analysis showed very clearly that the impacts being talked about are just not there.  I think it's really good news that we can do this rail expansion with very little impact on air quality."  I would like to extend a sincere invitation to Brian Peltier to invest in a condominium being built within 30 metres of the strike corridor as so many have done without foreknowledge of this rail expansion.  Developers have been told to redesign their blueprints to not to include windows in the first three floors of these new condominiums due to the amount of soot these floors will collect from this diesel rail traffic.

To their credit, Metrolinx has established a Community Advisory Committee for Electrification comprised of sixteen community appointees who have expertise in urban planning and development, workplace health, engineering, and social innovation.  This is positive news, however, as this is the eleventh study for the study for electrification during this long, arduous process of protecting this diesel rail expansion in the most ludicrous, involved manner imaginable, it is a trifle suspect.  Really, Lewis Carroll could not have dreamed of a Wonderland in which the general public has paid for an Air Quality Report which says that over 464 trains a day would make no difference to the noise and vibration levels and air quality as they pass directly beside their homes, as well as ten studies trying to prove that electric trains are not better than diesel. 

I want to ask every executive at Metrolinx who has children and elderly parents, especially Brian Peltier - at what length would you go to protect your own health, and your family's future health, from this level of toxicity in your neighbourhood?  And why are we, in the 416 region, paying your agency $5 million of our tax money to have you convince us that diesel emissions are not toxic because you want diesel trains to hurtle their way through our inner city neighbourhoods on their way to your suburban homes in the 905, without even stopping to pick us up? 

Brian Peltier Quote Reference and Video of the Stroller Parade:

Toronto Sun 'Residents want train derailed:

Rally at Queen's Park to demand halt to use of diesel engines on planned Union-Pearson rail line'

By JONATHAN JENKINS, QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU at http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2009/07/20/10199731.html#/news/torontoandgta/2009/07/21/pf-10202501.html

Over 400 Diesel Trains a day will run beside 76 Schools

In the Environmental Assessment as performed by Metrolinx, 'receptors', which are residences and families, along the corridor are viewed as less important than 'sensitive receptors', which are schools, daycare centers, and nursing homes. A family residence can also house young children and the elderly, so should be considered a 'sensitive receptor' as well, but this is an implicit admission that the projections of the toxicity of the environmental pollution will be very high as emitted by this diesel train corridor. The density of the population is 300 000 in 300 metres from the edge of this corridor, including a minimum of 30 000 school children, and 76 schools, daycare centers, nursing homes and parks. The second draft of the Metrolinx Environmental Assessment says that air quality is so bad in Toronto that a 15% increase in our air pollution is negligible as contributed by this diesel corridor - tell that to those who will wipe soot off their windowsills daily, and wonder how much of this has ended up in their lungs.

It is known that exposure to fine particulate matter in diesel emissions stunt the growth of young lungs so that they never reach full capacity, so electrifying the diesel train system in 15 years time to electric is not fast enough, as proposed by Metrolinx- these students will be a generation of young adults with impaired lung capacity. An environmental expert has gone on record to say that he would not live within 250m of this corridor as it increases all types of illness by 18% as the particulate matter is absorbed through the lungs into the blood stream to become heavy metals as an additional load for the kidneys to bear, and accumulate as bodily toxins permanently.

In my neighbourhood, the Newmarket and Georgetown corridors run directly beside the West Toronto Collegiate's running track. And I mean directly- the Newmarket corridor is beside the fence of the field, and the Georgetown is 75 meters from the Newmarket. So, as students have gym class, they will breathe the diesel emissions of both the Georgetown and Newmarket corridors, as well as the Air Rail Link, of up to 464 train trips daily, rushing by their playing field.

Tell me then- why is the federal and provincial government voluntarily, under the moniker of Metrolinx, with full, readily available environmental knowledge regarding diesel emissions, choosing to endanger the health of school children? And, as the City Council has a mandate to decrease greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050, why is the federal and provincial government working deliberately against the municipal government's mandate? Why is the City Council not moving more quickly to actively protect Toronto residents and school children through *more* than strongly worded municipal bylaws? Why does the City Council view this as outside their jurisdiction when it will undercut the positive effects of their greening policies?

Will Metrolinx, by extension the the federal and provincial government, pay the difference in what our houses can sell for after this corridor is built as opposed to what they were worth before it was built? The immediate area around the rail corridor will quite possibly become a ghost town in parts of the west end as people choose to sell their houses and move away from the noise and the smell. Will MPAC, if the municipal government does not protect the interests of homeowners, give me a reduction on my rising property taxes as my property and quality of life are devalued? Will Metrolinx be willing to pay the additional burden of my own, and many others, rising health costs and sick days due to my proximity to the corridor, to OHIP?

And why is this diesel corridor being built in the first place when electric train engineering standards and specifications are readily available for electric trains and used throughout major cities in the world? New York's electric train system was successfully built in 1908, why is the GTA one hundred years behind?

There must be a reason why this irrational project is being pounded through the GTA, and I will discuss it on my next post.

For more information about this GSSE, please go to the Clean Train Coalition Site at http://www.cleantrain.ca and the Weston Community Coalition Site at http://westoncommunitycoalition.ca/

Democracy and Metrolinx? No way.

Fair Political Representation without Corporate Conflict of Interest, and Primary Health Prevention:

Canada is a democracy. As it is a democracy, residents of Toronto should have City Councillors as representatives on the Board of Directors of Metrolinx who express our grave concerns about this rail expansion in our neighbourhoods. Mayor Miller, who has worked so hard to implement greening measures in the City of Toronto, and Councillor Giambrone, the chair of the TTC, have been removed as our last representatives from Metrolinx' Board of Directors. Therefore, the residents of Toronto no longer have any representation for this project on Metrolinx at all.

By replacing Toronto's representatives entirely with Board of Directors on Metrolinx who actively represent the industrial, corporate interests of the rail expansion, these new Board of Directors have a direct conflict of interest with an unbiased Environmental Assessment and the democratic rights of the residents of Toronto to protect our quality of life and health. They will vote in favour of infrastructure implementation as their corporate interest.

Moreover, as primary prevention in the healthcare community becomes internationally accepted as the norm to prevent the creation of carcinogens at the source (in this case, diesel emissions), thereby future medical treatment, the federal and provincial governments are in direct conflict with their role as advocates for a healthy society. Will the federal and provincial government be prepared to carry the costs of medical treatments for the respiratory ailments that they have incurred in this rail corridor through these self-generated diesel emissions? Is it not contradictory that this corridor will put at risk children in parks and schools, hospitals nearby the tracks, and the elderly in nursing homes- all institutions that the government funds? Why would the federal and provincial government choose to undercut their support of federally and provincial institutions and faciliities by choosing to pollute the environment around the facilities that they have built and funded? This is an even greater conflict of interest of public interest with corporate investment, and indicates that the federal and provincial government no longer represents or protects its citizens.