Montrealers ticketed $654 for crossing Mile End train tracks; MPs in talks after fatal accident

A man crosses the CP tracks in Mile End through a section of the fence that remains open this month. (Photo: Gabriel Lavallee)

A month after a young woman was struck and killed on Montreal train tracks, other locals are getting slapped with heavy fines—more than $650 each—for crossing at the same spot.

Little has been done to warn locals away from the busy area, they say, with the fencing still full of gaps, and they protest that the amount is exorbitant.

But heat is increasingly falling on the federal government, not just Canadian Pacific Rail (CP), over the issue.

The young woman’s death last month sparked a strong statement from one of Montreal’s most influential Liberal MPs, the Plateau's Steven Guilbeault, who said he's also looking at solutions with CP's cooperation.

But all three MPs responsible for the area are in talks with the city to find a longer-term fix, with one also looking at tabling a bill in Ottawa that could force a safe crossing to be built against CP’s wishes.

“In Montreal it’s not the first death, and it's definitely not the first injury,” said Lisa Cerasuolo, an aide in the office of Rosemont’s MP, the NDP’s Alexandre Boulerice.

The NDP thinks it’s worth a Canada-wide change, she said, since some other cities also contend with railroads criss-crossing busy urban areas, leading to other deaths and fines that are “insanely expensive,” she said.

Even the new fines, which have more than quadrupled in the last year, are a federal decision. CP says that Ottawa upped the fines in 2021.

The company is also currently under an order from Transport Canada to police trespassing in Mile End more than usual, after the death of the 31-year-old in February.

NEW TICKETS ARE 'A MONTH'S RENT' 

Some of those who have gotten the $654 tickets, most of whom have crossed the railroad tracks in question countless times, say they must make some real sacrifices to pay them off.

“I'm going to have to work a lot more and make that money back,” said Turner Thompson, a 21-year-old student who was fined by Canadian Pacific (CP) Rail police on the weekend of Feb. 19.

“It's changed a couple of plans of mine,” he said, including some travel he was hoping to do in the summer -- he'll have to fit in more earning hours instead.

Thompson, who attends McGill and lives in Mile End, frequently crosses the tracks to Rosemont to work at a café or the library near Rosemont metro.

“I acknowledge that it's trespassing,” he added. But “I had never even thought of that, to be quite honest.”

He hadn’t even heard of the “tragic” February death of the 31-year-old photographer when he was ticketed, he said.

“For me I think the really frustrating thing is, just because they have't mended or changed anything on the fence on the Van Horne [side of the tracks]... it almost felt like a trap,” he said.

There’s “an entire quadrant of the fence” near Van Horne and St-Laurent Boulevard that’s missing, where people normally walk through, he said. It was still wide open.

Gabriel Lavallée, a nearby business owner who also got ticketed the same weekend, said the “steep” ticket is “a month’s rent.”

Lavallée, 45, said he’s been crossing the same tracks, between St-Denis and St-Laurent in Mile End, throughout his life and that there’s still very heavy traffic across them.

There was “no warning,” he said. “The passage at this intersection is pretty open.”

FINES INCREASED FIVEFOLD LAST SUMMER

CP spokesperson Stacy Patenaude said that the fines increased very steeply last summer.

In June 2021, the federal government announced that “the fine for trespassing property where railway lines are located have increased from $100 to $500,” she explained.

The federally set fine for not giving way at railway crossings increased at the same time from $150 to $750.

In a statement at the time, Transport Canada seemed to refer to a rise in accidents on Canadian railways.

“Increased incidents of trespassing and interfering with the safe operation of the railway system provide sufficient evidence that the original amounts of the fines were not significant enough to deter these dangerous actions,” the agency said.

It said that in 2020, there were 39 deaths linked to trespassing on railways across the country.

With administrative fees, the old $100 fine added up to around $150 and the new, higher fine adds up to $654.

“Trespassing on railroad tracks is illegal and dangerous,” Patenaude said on behalf of CP. “Pedestrians should only ever cross railroad tracks at designated, marked public crossings.”

People doing otherwise can be subject to not just fines but arrest, she said.

For decades, the company has fought requests to install a marked, protected street-level crossing in that stretch of tracks, which is the City of Montreal’s preferred solution.

Instead, it was given the right to do something it has no interest in doing and has said it doesn’t plan to do: build a raised pedestrian walkway over the tracks.

That was the binding decision in mediation that ended in 2019, before a federal body known as the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA).

The CTA, after hearing arguments from CP and the city, ruled that year that a street-level crossing would interfere with CP’s operations, while it was possible—if more expensive and not within the city’s wishes—to build a raised crossing, which would be entirely at the city’s expense.

MINISTER MOTIVATED BY 'TRAGIC ACCIDENT' 

The three federal ridings that touch the relevant stretch of tracks are held by two parties -- one of which, of course, is currently in power.

On the northern side, Rosemont is represented by the NDP’s Boulerice. On the southern side, in Mile End between St-Laurent and St-Denis, the riding is Outremont, held by Liberal Rachel Bendayan.

While many people think of Mile End as being part of the Plateau, as far as the federal riding map is concerned, the Plateau begins only east of St-Denis in that area.

That riding, Laurier-Ste-Marie, is held by Liberal Steven Guilbeault, who is also a minister in the Trudeau cabinet, overseeing environment and climate change.

Guilbeault told CTV that he’s not happy with the current situation at the tracks along his riding’s northern edge, particularly in light of the recent death.

“The tragic accident that occurred recently reminds us that the current situation does not sufficiently ensure the safety of pedestrians trying to cross the rail tracks,” he said in a statement sent by his office.

“My colleague Rachel Bendayan… and I are working with the City of Montreal to identify and support a solution that will ensure the safety of pedestrians, with the cooperation of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP).”

Despite the party lines that separate them, the Liberal MPs have also been in touch in the last few weeks with Boulerice’s office, and all three say they’ve been speaking to the city.

For Boulerice’s staff, the fact that Canada’s governing party is getting involved seems like good news, said Cerasuolo, Boulerice’s aide.

The Liberal MPs said they couldn’t provide more details right now on exactly what kind of solutions they’re considering.

Cerasuolo said the NDP has twice introduced a bill that it thinks is the best lasting answer: it would give the federal government the power to force a crossing to be built across railways.

Right now the CTA’s rulings are the final say on such requests, so this would create one high-level discretionary option above that.

“At the moment the transport minister has blanket permission to ask CP or CN to remove a structure on a railroad,” she said.

The law her party wants to see would “give the transport minister the flip side of that [right], to impose a structure when it was deemed necessary," she said.

The bill, which was first introduced in the 2016-2017 legislative year, didn’t get widespread support and it died both times.

Boulerice’s office also took the issue directly to the former transport minister, Marc Garneau, but that didn’t lead to changes either.

The NDP is looking seriously at reintroducing the same bill this spring, said Cerasuolo.

“It's not so much of an issue in rural settings, but I do believe there are other cities that have this as well,” she said.

In Calgary, for example, pedestrians have been hit and killed while crossing at unofficial spots in busy residential areas.

But “it particularly affects Montreal because it has multiple railroads…that intersect,” said Cerasuolo.

In Montreal, the three ridings that touch the Mile End tracks are far from the only ones with similar ongoing safety worries, she said. The rest are also held by Liberals, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose riding includes Parc-Ex, where debates have raged for years over building more level crossings (at least two of which have now been built).

Saint-Henri, NDG and Westmount and the LaSalle-Ville Émard area are all good examples, said Cerasuolo.

The city repeated this week that it’s only trying to move towards building a street-level crossing, and it said it’s placing its hopes in a federal change of heart.

“The Ville de Montréal is continuing its representations, in particular with the federal government, in order to put in place safe, efficient and universally accessible facilities, such as level crossings,” spokesperson Hugo Beaudoin wrote in a statement.