I mean how stupid do you have to be to "take a chance" at a level crossing?

[JollyPirate]

Honestly

Anyway, if you know the timetable that well, surely you can organise your journeys to avoid being held up at crossings?

Rusty Bear I just recognised my local station from your description!!!

The whole town grinds to a halt regularly, I just avoid going over the level crossing.

CarGirl - the proposals for the development of the south side of town include replacing the two unmanned crossings with one bridge - I think doing it as part of a massive development is the only way it'll ever happen.

Edam,

I didn't say that I jumped the barriers!!! No one does around here - they go through on amber, and some people will even go through on red. But there is still ages before the train arrives. It doesn't take a mile to stop - we only have a mile between stations.

What we need is better signalling, so that the downtime is much less than it is. They are planning a new service on our line and it will have the barriers down for 50 minutes per hour with current signalling policy.

And there are plenty of campaigns and petitions flying around for alternatives.

The downtime is what it needs to be surely. They don't do it for fun or to piss people off. You just have to live with it and as someone said plan your moves around it as much as you can.

MmeBlueberry - yes, if there is less than a mile between stations, the train will not be going very fast, and will be able to stop in less than a mile - but the timetable, and knowledge of the local trains will not protect against the possibility that a train is coming through non-stop for some reason - perhaps a goods train, or a special service of some sort, not in the timetable.

In that case the train would be going much faster and would have a much longer stopping distance.

You need to talk to the Train Operating Company and Network Rail about this issue - I agree, having the barriers down for 50 minutes out of every hour is ridiculous, and is going to annoy people. I will have a word with dh and see if he can suggest a few names of people you can write to, if that would help. And don't get squished by a train in the meantime - ok? [smile}

Freight trains have to obey the line speed limit, which is 30mph on our section.

Downtimes were set prior to the technology we have now. They can easily be reduced.

There is compulsion for train companies to give any consideration to road users. They can set their timetables and alter them as they wish. There is no consultation process. It is only fair that roads should be open for guaranteed times to maintain the flow of traffic and prevent gridlock. When you have a town that is surrounded by level crossings, gridlock is an every day reality.

We have gridlock here too, barriers down more than they are up. It might even be the same place from your description, Mme B.

People have wanted a road bridge for years but of course it was put off over and over again, and is never likely to happen now. It will need to at some stage though. The traffic is diabolical.

MmeBlueberry - stopping a freight train from 30mph is not the same as stopping a car from 30mph - the weight of the train imparts a lot of momentum, and if the rails are at all slippery for any reason, the stopping distances will get longer.

I get the feeling I am banging my head against a brick wall here. Trains are huge, heavy dangerous vehicles that cannot swerve around a pedestrian or car, and that cannot stop quickly. Yes, it must be hugely frustrating and annoying when level crossing barriers cause gridlock - but a fatality on a level crossing is going to snarl up the traffic much more, as well as shafting the train service for those who rely on it, and risking injury to those on the train, and loss of his career for the driver if he is too traumatised to drive a train again.

I cannot understand why anyone would justify risking all this for the sake of getting somewhere a bit faster or not having to sit in a traffic jam.

I don't think anybody is justifying it, SDTG - understanding why someone does something doesn't mean approving of it.

I used to live in a town where the barriers used to be down for up to 15minutes at a time depending on what was going through. The trigger for the barriers was way back up the line, and we used to get a lot of slow freight trains going through, so it could take ages before they even arrived. Because people knew this, we used to see lots of these sort of incidents with people jumping the lights, driving round the barriers, being hit by the barriers as they came down because they had moved across the crossing before they could exit fully, etc. etc.

There is a pedestrian bridge but that's no help to the cars of course. There are regular complaints about the length of time the barriers are down, especially as it does take so long before a train appears but it makes no difference. To be fair, in the 14 years I lived there, there were no fatalities on that crossing but more by luck than anything else, I would think.

I'd rather be delayed four minutes than squished!

There are, clearly a lot of things which delay us in life and yes they are frustrating but there's some you can't argue with. Taxes and level crossings, can't avoid them, can't bypass them, get over it. Live your lives and don't become a big sloppy stain on the rails.

I have a healthy fear of all large metal things that move faster than I can.

I've been doing a bit of googling, and I've found the rail industry's safety report for last year here.

I'm no statistician, but it seems to me that over the past 10 years, the number of potentially higher risk train accidents (not sure what this is exactly, but it doesn't sound cuddly or wuddly) has more than halved, and level crossing incidents are now the single biggest cause of death on the railways.

On the Precursor indicator, level crossing misuse is now the single biggest factor, and has not improved over the past 10 years. I am assuming that the precursor indicator shows incidents that could have led to a serious accident, but didn't - like the woman with her pram on the level crossing!

Further down, it says:

"Members of the public

Eight of the 14 public fatalities not related to trespass or suicide occurred to pedestrians at level crossings.

Five involved road vehicle occupants who died in collisions with trains at level crossings; three of these fatalities occurred in a single accident, at Halkirk...."

That's 13 of the 14 public fatalities not related to suicide/trespass.

SDTG, I'm not saying you should stop a freight train. We haven't had any accidents on our line in the last 20 years that I have lived here, except for once when a bus skidded and crashed into closed barriers (it didn't get onto the track, so everyone was safe), and a couple of kids playing near the live rail.

What gets my goat is that the train companies don't give any consideration to the rest of the community when they set their timetables, and that Network Rail uses unreasonable signaling policies.

If they were reasonable, no one would go through red lights, which is the extent of any problem where I live. We have full barriers so there is no scope for weaving through them.