100-year-old deal allows railway to close Ramsay-Inglewood crossing

A railway is making good on a century-old agreement to close a crossing in the southeast Calgary community of Ramsay.

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) has decided to close the level crossing of its tracks on Eighth Street, near Ninth Avenue. Trains will still use the tracks, but vehicles and people won't be able to cross.

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Coun. Gian-Carlo Carrasays the railway is concerned about safety as population density increases in the area. And hesays there's nothing the city can do to force CPR to keep the crossing open.

"They're cashing in their chip from, you know, like, 100 years ago."

Some people who live in the neighbourhood aren't keen about the plan, either.

Ian Gibbs says he's disappointed because the closure would mean a longer walk to Inglewood and create other challenges.

"Eliminating the [crossing]lights here altogether, I don't think is going to help any. It's just going to force congestion somewhere else," he said.

"The driver really was behind safety," city transportation spokesman SeanSomerstold theCalgaryEyeopener.

"I heard or read a quote from CP saying, 'the safest at-grade crossing is no grade crossing at all.' And in some cases we do have the real estate to do that, for example, not too far from there, a few blocks west on FourthStreet near the new National Music Centre, we built an underpass. The same thing is happening on Glenmore Trail near the community of Ogden, we're going over top of the rail system. So, it's not unprecedented."

Somers said the biggest issue isavailable space.

"We did look at something like an underpass but there was a couple complicating factors including the river, the proximity of both NinthAvenue and the bridge, we just don't have the room to build an underpass," he said.

"So the next logical step is close it and then what we'll do is see what we can find out in terms of potential alternate locations for something else to help get traffic through there."

Carra saidone alternative mightbea new underpass at Sixth Street or possibly Ninth Street, but that has yet to be determined.

According to city numbers, about 3,000 vehicles use the crossingdaily.

"So that's not a major commuter route, that's not a minor commuter route even, that's pretty localized residential traffic," said Somers.

"So in the grand scheme of things, pretty low volume road."

The level crossing is expected to close at some point in the next couple of years.Carra says he expects the closure will happen when construction starts on theGreen Line because the new LRT route will cross Eighth Street next to the CP tracks.

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener