Railway level crossings

esuhl

jbuchanangb wrote: »

Sadly a driver lost his life due to his own impatience when he drove round the barriers at Athelney on 21 March 2013.
http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report042014.cfm
Due to engineering work the previous night the barriers came down early for the first train of the day. But he should have waited.

What an idiot. Kamikaze drivers are a huge problem on the roads. They seem to think the normal rules of the road don't apply to them.

Pennywise

timbo58 wrote: »

I think this is all down to perception -if I am stuck in traffic for 2 minutes it feels like 10 etc.

No, the one I'm talking about is definitely five minutes. The timetable shows it taking 4 minutes to get from Morecambe to Bare Lane and the driver must take a minute between pressing the button and getting back in his cab, starting the train etc, so 5 minutes is right which agrees to my clock in the car!

Interesting to read the RIAB report referred to the ORR guidance which said that for 100mph trains, at least 95% should arrive within 75 seconds and 50% within 50 seconds.

So express 100mph trains only need the barriers to be down 50-75 seconds before arriving, yet a slow rural train barely 10mph because it's stopping at the station gets the barriers down 5 minutes before!

That clearly illustrates the point I'm making. Bringing the barriers down too soon makes them more dangerous not safer! If people know they're going to be stuck there so long, they're far more likely to jump the amber, drive around them, or pedestrians may decide to jump them.

timbstoke

This idea of getting trains to stop at crossings might be quite lovely when you look at your little, once an hour, rural station. But then you drill into the locals heads the idea that "don't worry, trains stop for traffic and you can see when there's one waiting." You remove their need to be careful. And then they go on holiday and get wiped out as soon as they cross the West Coast Mainline. Or the train stops 12 feet later than it should and ends up taking out a bus full of schoolkids. Or any other number of bad things happen that you don't even consider, because smarter people than you considered them half a century or more ago and built failsafe's around them.

Right now, everybody knows exactly where they stand - trains are fast, they hurt if they hit you, and they don't stop at level crossings. Also, jumping level crossings is illegal. There's even red lights AND beepy noises to make the point that a large heavy object is coming and doesn't intend to stop for you. It's hardly rocket science.

If, despite all the safeguards that are in place now, you decide to jump the crossing and become one of these rare fatalities, chances are we're not going to be missing out on the next Nobel Prize winner anyway.

Stigy

Sorry if this has already been said, but I've not been able to trundle my way through all three pages of this thread.

In theory a single carriage train should be able to stop as quickly and as safely as any road vehicle....unfortunately though, road vehicles don't have steel wheels in contact with steel rails. Leaves on the line etc is a very real problem. Trains stopping at a leisurely pace is one thing, but when you may need to stop in an emergency, either on slippery rails or even dry ones, you risk skidding far more than a modern road vehicle with safety aids such as ABS, ESP and/or TCS. Trains are archaic in terms of modern features allowing them to be as versatile alas road vehicles. It would be suicidal to give priority at ANY level crossing to road vehicles.

modsandmockers

Stigy wrote: »

Sorry if this has already been said, but I've not been able to trundle my way through all three pages of this thread.

In theory a single carriage train should be able to stop as quickly and as safely as any road vehicle....unfortunately though, road vehicles don't have steel wheels in contact with steel rails. Leaves on the line etc is a very real problem. Trains stopping at a leisurely pace is one thing, but when you may need to stop in an emergency, either on slippery rails or even dry ones, you risk skidding far more than a modern road vehicle with safety aids such as ABS, ESP and/or TCS. Trains are archaic in terms of modern features allowing them to be as versatile alas road vehicles. It would be suicidal to give priority at ANY level crossing to road vehicles.

The thread is absolutely not about emergency stops - it is about the fact that if a slow-moving 1 or 2 carriage train on a little-used rural branch line is able to stop successfully, as planned, at a station, then it also ought to be able to stop successfully, as planned, at a level crossing (especially if the station is immediately adjacent to the crossing). Branch line rail technology is indeed archaic, and should probably be replaced with busways. But, in the meantime, since we cannot change the technology, let's just change the plan.

Stigy

modsandmockers wrote: »

The thread is absolutely not about emergency stops - it is about the fact that if a slow-moving 1 or 2 carriage train on a little-used rural branch line is able to stop successfully, as planned, at a station, then it also ought to be able to stop successfully, as planned, at a level crossing (especially if the station is immediately adjacent to the crossing). Branch line rail technology is indeed archaic, and should probably be replaced with busways. But, in the meantime, since we cannot change the technology, let's just change the plan.

Sorry, but you can't pick and chose what sort of stopping a train might be doing when saying that a level crossing's right of way should be equal between road users and rail users. For example, if a train overshoots a red 'traffic light' and kills a road user due to slippery rail conditions, who is to blame?

I see what you're saying about planned station stops, but a train driver knows exactly when he has a planned stop, but often, even in these cases has issues with braking safely. In the case of railway signalling, not taking planned stations in to account, a driver usually has a mile or so at least between a green signal and a red one (It usually goes; Green, Double Amber, Amber and then red). Road signalling is one set of traffic lights that goes from green to red (including amber) in a few seconds. Even braking normally, a train would inevitably end up in an emergency stop situation when stopping even from about 30-mph. Unless you're talking about planning stops at red level crossing signals in advance, I don't see how you can stop a train in that period of time. In an ideal world with ideal track conditions? Maybe.

Even taking emergency stops out of the equation, slippery rails affect normal braking too. I'm not a train driver, but I'd like to think common sense would prevail when we're talking about 100(ish) tonnes of train (using a small two carriage train as an example) with metal wheels, stopping successfully on metal rails. Even stopping from 30-mph could be a challenge. Add in wet leaves to the scenario and it gets worse.

Lets not beat about the bush here. It's a silly idea.

Laz123

There's a level crossing at Barnes where the signalman must doze off between trains. The barriers come down, a minutes or two later the train passes, then barriers stay down for another five minutes, another train passes then if you're lucky the barriers raise up and everyone who has patiently or impatiently waited can then pass.

Pennywise

Laz123 wrote: »

There's a level crossing at Barnes where the signalman must doze off between trains. The barriers come down, a minutes or two later the train passes, then barriers stay down for another five minutes, another train passes then if you're lucky the barriers raise up and everyone who has patiently or impatiently waited can then pass.

That's nothing, you can wait between 30-45 minutes on St Michael's Lane at Bolton Le Sands. Worst time is between 13:00 - 13:30. Gaps of at least 5 minutes between trains which is plenty of time to open and close the barriers again especially if they're slow, local trains, which many are. I can understand the longer delays between trains for the expresses and long heavy goods trains, but not for the trains that go through very slowly because they're leaving or joining the main line at junctions within sight of the crossing. And then they wonder why more people try to jump the crossing when the lights start to flash. It's human nature to go through at amber before the barriers come down if you can, if you have an expectation of being stuck there for 15-30-45 minutes!

modsandmockers

Stigy wrote: »

Sorry, but you can't pick and chose what sort of stopping a train might be doing when saying that a level crossing's right of way should be equal between road users and rail users. For example, if a train overshoots a red 'traffic light' and kills a road user due to slippery rail conditions, who is to blame?)

Lets not beat about the bush here. It's a silly idea.

The 'idea' is that, on lightly used branch lines with one or two slow-moving carriages occasionally passing by, there is no longer any good reason for the 19th century practice of allowing automatic priority to the railway.

The suggestion is not that there should be 'equal' priority, it is that priority should be given to the more significant users of the crossing (ie - the road users). All of the fatalities at branch line level crossings are caused by road users choosing to ignore the red light. They do so because, unlike 19th century peasants, they can see no good reason to wait, and their experience is that jumping the crossing is almost always successful.

Whenever there is talk of lowering road speed limits, we are told that our economic well-being will be adversely affected by the additional time which will be needed to get from one meeting to another. So why is it it OK to hold up the road traffic for many minutes at a time, so that a nearly empty railway carriage or two can trundle through at it's own leisurely pace?

How often do branch line trains overshoot their compulsory station stops? Why would there be a greater risk of them overshooting their compulsory level crossing stops?

Switching the priorities at branch line level crossings would save lives.

jbuchanangb

Six people killed in US today when female driver of Jeep Cherokee decided to try and jump the level crossing barriers. Barrier came down on her car, train hit it and she was one of the ones killed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31124170
Trains cannot, do not, and will not stop for cars on crossings.