A harrowing collision between a Via Rail train and a car in Barrhaven this weekend is renewing calls for grade separation at level rail crossings as witnesses share details about the moments just after the crash. The crash happened at a rail crossing on Fallowfield Road near Woodroffe Avenue on Sunday afternoon. Dr. Lesley Spencer, a former emergency medicine doctor, was waiting for her husband’s train to arrive at Fallowfield Station. “All of a sudden he texted me, ‘I think we hit a car’ and I look up and the train is totally stopped,” Spencer said. Spencer says she quickly drove around to the scene a short distance away from the station. “I went over just to make sure she didn’t have any immediately threatening injuries because I could hear the ambulance coming down the road and she was talking and seemingly fine and as soon as the ambulance got there, I left because they can do it better than I can,” Spencer said. Ottawa firefighters had to extricate the woman in her 40s from the vehicle. Paramedics say she was taken to hospital in stable condition. Police did not share any updates on the crash Monday but said Sunday night the rail crossing signals were working properly. Barrhaven resident Daljit Nirman has started a petition calling on all levels of government to work to create grade separation at the crossings — something he’s done frequently since the fatal bus-train collision nearby in 2013. On Sept. 18, 2013, six people were killed when a train struck a double decker OC Transpo bus just east of Fallowfield Station. “My request is not about politics, it’s about public safety,” Nirman said. “This will remove the conflict. If the rail and the road and the cars meet at the same point, there is a conflict. But if they don’t and they have the separate levels, it’s a permanent solution.” A 2017 study by the City of Ottawa found grade separations at Barrhaven and Merivale Road rail crossings would cost $430 million. Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo said while the idea for grade separation has merit, he would rather see it done as part of a larger project when LRT Stage 3 comes to Barrhaven, though there’s no timeline for that yet. “Day in day out, these railway crossings work. Lots of trains cross thousands and thousands of cars across all of these railway crossings,” Lo said. “It is unfortunate that these incidents do happen, but I believe the response should be proportionate to the nature of these incidents. Again, understanding the sensitivity of past incidents that have happened at the other crossing here.” VIA Rail said no passengers or crew members were hurt in Sunday’s incident. Passengers were eventually evacuated from the train after several hours and police officers and firefighters helped get them to the train station on foot.
