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TransLink met with the residents Friday to outline what it is doing to address the situation. SkyTrain boss Vivienne King, who is president of TransLink subsidiary B.C. Rapid Transit Corp., said she will personally visit two of the residents to see what they are experiencing. At the same time, she said, TransLink has a program to reduce SkyTrain noise over the next two years.

Efforts could include replacing older switches, grinding the head of the offending noisy switch and doing “rail profiling,” which shapes the train wheels to match the rails to lessen the noise, she said. TransLink already grinds the switches regularly.

But she acknowledges some of these measures will take time and money and “can’t be done overnight.” TransLink, for instance, plans to buy a grinder — it now rents one — so it has more flexibility over when to use it. And it has more than 100 switches that need to be replaced along the SkyTrain line. These each take at least two days to complete.

“Steel on steel will make noise,” King said. “This has been a 30-year problem and with more density we will get more people buying houses next to rail lines. Noise is an issue in every singe railway … there are many options to address it but they come with very large price tags.”

King noted the stretch between Main and Stadium stations has a 70-metre curve, one of the tightest on the system, which means there is likely to be noise as the trains round the bend — even though the speeds have been reduced to 50 km/h. Some cities have used rubber bats on the side of the rails to muffle the noise, she noted but they proved to be expensive and ineffective as they fell off.