Level crossing guidance updated by ORR

[PG]

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) have published updated guidance on the thorny subject of Level Crossings, which IMO is long overdue.

Draft proposals in the new Principles for managing level crossing safety are designed to improve risk assessments at level crossings and provide practical advice on how to identify and manage risks that affect the safety of people who use them.

The plans move away from the current, more prescriptive document and aims to give industry greater confidence in putting forward innovative designs to reduce risks.

The guidance focuses on the need to consider how level crossings are actually used and encourages a whole system approach by considering the user, railway and highway.

The principles also emphasise the importance of collaboration to remove and manage risks and explains how cost benefit analysis can be used in decision making to allow for consideration of all relevant costs and benefits.

Possibly allowing Network Rail more freedom to keep certain crossings open instead of the "we must close them" mantra, which seems to have been the prevailing view for a good number of years regardless of the costs or transference of risk e.g. requiring users to walk along a road with (statistically) increased risks.