11-10-2016, 04:20 PM
(11-10-2016, 01:20 PM)Canard Wrote: I didn't mention the Spur Line Trail
John Tory just got his wrist slapped by Metrolinx PR:
A warning to all news outlets: may seem like a cool visual, but it's illegal to trespass on a rail corridor & you could both die. Don't. Thx https://t.co/Qy8qcIwLYx
— Anne Marie Aikins (@femwriter) November 10, 2016
You “corrected” what I said to leave out “HSR”, meaning that all tracks no matter how sparsely used are covered by the edited sentence. In particular, it’s reasonable to assume from this and other things you’ve written that you would be opposed to people walking on the ties on the Spur Line during the day when there is no longer any train traffic, not even the slow traffic we had before.
My point is that there is nothing at all wrong with some trespassing, including on some railway rights-of-way. The key is to put careful thought into it and not just assume that it’s safe just because the traffic level isn’t obvious like it is on a busy highway. The world doesn’t generally work on the basis of blind unthinking adherence to rules, even safety rules.
Having said that, I’m not sure what I think of these photos of politicians on railway tracks. On the one hand, I assume they and their photographers are watching what they’re doing. Also, if they are doing it at an authorized crossing, it’s not at all clear to me that they are in fact trespassing — a crossing is a place where it is definitely legal to cross the tracks. On the other hand, it implicitly suggests standing right in the middle of train tracks, which even though I’m fine with it in the right circumstances, I don’t actually want to specifically encourage people to hang out there.