The Editor,
Re: "Gate's down but rail safety still on agenda," the Now, June 24.
Thank you to all the people who attended, participated and presented at the rally at White Rock's "City by the Sea" on June 20.
Special thanks to organizer Pat Petrula for putting this extremely important event together.
The main idea that I took from this gathering is that rail safety, according to Transport Canada and BNSF, means keeping people away from the tracks and therefore the beach, so that BNSF can put on more than the current 20 trains a day and increase the speeds to further increase their profits.
The dangerous goods that Mayor Wayne Baldwin has been voicing concern over should never be going through such a pristine ecological and highly populated area.
People with foresight are talking about this foreshore of the Salish Sea at White Rock that serves all of the residents south of the Fraser, (Surrey, Langley,Cloverdale, Delta Abbotsford and more) as being a national treasure, one that should be preserved and cherished by all.
Some think it should become a federal park. It is linked with the only other natural beach on the Semiahmoo Peninsula - Crescent Beach, which everyone (except those in Ottawa) knows is even more endangered by the trains. Providing this parkway makes great sense.
What we need is to link this area to the Mud Bay bikeway and eventually connect it up to Delta and beyond. We could call it the South Fraser Seawall and have something for taxpayers here that compares to the Stanley Park seawall.
It's something to think about.
Susan Potzold, White Rock