Thousands of London homes at an unsafe distance from tracks

When Luke and Jillian Pare bought their home in Old East Village last fall, their only concern about the nearby Canadian Pacific Railway yard was the potential noise. 

"I didn't think about anything other than 'am I going to hear the train?' and for the most part we don't really notice it," Luke Pare told CBC News. 

Pare said he and his wife settled on the two-storey, century-old home on Elias Street after months of being on the losing end of bidding wars in London's red hot real estate market. 

Would not meet new standards

What they didn't know however, is that their home is within a 'red zone.' It's a recently established national rail buffer zone recommended by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the Railway Association of Canada that was drawn up just over a month before the Lac Mégantic explosion that killed 47 people in July 2013.

"We are definitely very close and if something like that were to ever happen, that would be very worrisome," Jillian Pare said. 

The Pares new house is one of thousands of London homes that would not meet national rail buffer zone recommendations if they were built today.

A CBC News analysis of the city's rail network reveals that more than 6,000 residential properties throughout London fall either partially or completely within the minimum recommended distance from rail lines outlined in a report for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the Railway Association of Canada.

Lessons from Lac Megantic not included

The report recommends that the following buffer zones between new residential developments and railways be adopted across the country:

• 300 metres for rail yards
• 30 metres for main lines
• 15 metres for spur lines

The guidelines were developed for all Canadian municipalities in order to give cities a set of 'best practices' for development along rail corridors, according to the FCM. 

The intention was to create a buffer zone between peoples' homes and the railway, in order to mitigate noise, vibration, pollution, trespassing and what the FCM refers to as potential 'incidents.'

Published in May of 2013, about six weeks before the explosion in Lac Mégantic involving 72 rail cars filled with oil, the FCM said the guidelines do not reflect the lessons learned from that disaster and that an update would be available for municipalities sometime this fall. 

Living in 'the red zone'

The Pares aren't the only family in the neighbourhood worried about a potential incident inside the railyards just east of the Adelaide Street and Central Avenue area. 

"It's always a concern," Peter Starck, the president of the Old East Village Community Association said. "When they're hauling hazardous goods through the neighbourhood that certainly is something."

• City releases details about dangerous goods in London following CBC London investigation

"There's a red zone and we're well within it. That's an unsettling kind of thing," Starck said, noting while noise is an issue, traffic is still the biggest concern for nearby residents.

Historic problem

"I think for the most part, when people move in next to a freight railyard, they have some good sense of what they're getting," Jesse Helmer, the city councillor who represents Old East Village at London city hall told CBC News when asked about the six-thousand homes inside the new buffer zone. 

"Those are the guidelines from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for new development and I think they're quite reasonable," Jesse Helmer, the city councillor for Ward 4 told CBC London. 

But Helmer said the guidelines can't apply in a neighbourhood that dates back to the 1860s and once housed many of the workers who made a living in the shipping business when rail in Canada was still in its infancy. 

"Everything was built very close in fact, most of the houses that are in this area close to the railyard, people were working at the railway," he said. 

However, the trains of yesterday were different. Not only were they shorter, they didn't carry any of the highly flammable materials that's shipped along the rails today, which, when they ignited in Lac Mégantic, caused such widescale devastation. 

"It's certainly a concern when you have dangerous goods being shipped by rail," he said. "I have to say though that the main railways, CN and CP have a good safety record."

Still, according to the latest figures from the Transportation Safety Board, there is more than one accident on the rails in London each year, most involving vehicles at crossings. Between 2001 and 2015, 10 people were killed in the region and six others were seriously injured. 

Methodology and notes:

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities report defines the setback as the distance from the outer-limit of the right-of-way surrounding the rail line. CN and CP did not provide an estimated distance, however Transport Canada confirmed that in general a right-of-way extends about 15.25 metres on either side of the rail. This figure was applied to the rail network for the analysis.

The width of the setback applied to each string of rail was determined using the rail-type listed in the National Railway Network map maintained by Natural Resources Canada.

The digital building map and parcel classification used in the analysis were provided by the City of London. The land use data is current to 2013 and therefore may not provide a completely up-to-date picture. Structures included in the analysis include only those where at least one unit is classified as residential or where it is expected that an individual will reside for an extended period of time (e.g. nursing homes).

Analysis and calculation were performed using QGIS by Jacques Marcoux, CBC news.