so you would close every single level crossing that is accesible to pedestrians, so basically every single level crossing in the country?
No. My point was simply that rail staff cannot go trackside on a live railway but we leave the public free to cross it with zero training or supervision at foot crossings.
My point was that every single level crossing is effectively a foot crossing for this purpose, as every level crossing is open to use by pedestrians.
No. Foot as opposed to vehicular crossings.
If a railway crossing is used (legally) by pedestrians, do the risks you refer to not exist whether there are vehicles as well or not?
Is that a problem? I'm picturing Steam trains from Kingswear at 125 mph
No. At public vehicular crossings there are either variously barriers, lights or simply telephones to contact the signaller and obtain permission to cross.
There is a very strong argument that level crossing removals should look at wider scale traffic rerouting than just one side of the fence to the other. In a town centre this is multiplied by any strategic objective to reduce motor traffic in the town centre area itself.
Agreed, put a foot bridge or tunnel where the level crossing used to be, or elsewhere nearby, and reroute vehicular traffic away from the town centre.
Oh you are talking about the safety systems in place at different crossings, that explains the confusion.
Torbay Borough Council, under a brief spell of Lib Dem control, partially closed Torbay Road to motor traffic as part of such a rethink. This street crosses the railway and connects the bus and rail stations and town centre to the seafront and beach. It's very busy with pedestrians, especially in the summer, and is lined with tourist shops, cafes, fruit machine arcades and a massive Wetherspoons. The pedestrian scheme would have virtually eliminated vehicular traffic over the railway, with only limited delivery and emergency services access retained. It would also have included a conversion of a redundant left turn lane on the west side to a bus lane and stop so north to south buses could briefly drop off on the way to the bus station which requires a further 1/4 mile circuit of the gyratory through two light controlled junctions to reach the stand a few metres from where they just passed right in front of the rail station. TBC had surveyed the general public to justify the measures, which had shown large-scale support. As soon as the plans became more concrete with an initial trial of the ideas however, traders and others began a strong campaign of opposition. Then, when Conservatives regained power shortly after, it was the first thing they reversed, immediately reopening the road fully to all traffic.
Agreed. But unfortunately the ECML South of Grantham (when it is fully upgraded to 140 operations) would also be a new constant danger as well. It unfortunately is probably either one or the other which is a shame
It's only an additional danger if members of the public wander off in a direction they shouldn't.
That might be detected by intruder alarm systems at any crossings and other potential access points that remain. With the possibility of small batteries on board all DC units, gaps in live conductors could become longer around such potential access points.
How long do the gaps actually need to be? I'm not sure if there's a rule stating how far from the crossing the end of the juice rail has to be, but I can't recall ever crossing a line with 3rd rail where the distance was less than 2m. Pretty much every DC EMU is 3-cars minimum now (466s aside, which don't run solo these days anyway as a rule) so the risk of "gapping" at a crossing is negligible. Batteries really shouldn't be necessary to handle crossings outside of specific locations where nearby switches or crossings happen to line up in an unfortunate manner with gaps due to a level crossing- which could leave multiple shoe-fitted bogies "gapped".
That's always a risk though, and whether it's an acceptable risk now I'm not sure.
I'm suggesting that if a particular line is operated wholly by battery-equipped units then longer gaps might be tolerable, and desirable. If the conductor could end (say) 200m from a crossing, then at the moment of alert, a trespasser wouldn't be in immediate danger from the 3rd rail itself. There would be time to formulate an appropriate response and even if that is isolation of the wider approach sections, it needn't stop trains moving. They could still be cautioned through the area on battery while the incident is cleared. That ability to keep on motoring through an isolation whether planned or unexpected is a major resilience benefit of having at least a moderately sized emergency battery that could get passengers to the next station in a widespread outage.
200m is a ridiculous margin for error though. The Waterloo to Reading line has so many crossings that you'd essentially be de-electrifying a good chunk of the route. I think there has to be a point where we accept that if someone has got themselves into a dangerous situation it's on them.
Maybe that's too much. It's just an example figure to illustrate the principle.
Perhaps, but batteries could allow that, and could greatly simplify complex junction area conductor provision. I also think more crossings should be closed where possible, especially uncontrolled rural footpaths and occupation crossings, and all crossings on the fastest and busiest portions of our trunk mainline railways, whether electrified or not.
North of the railway is shed-on-the-bypass development (still open fields when I lived in Cononley 25 years ago) - a road parallel to the existing would affect 1-2 businesses; it wouldn't be difficult to avoid the couple of older properties on the south side of the railway and end up near the B6265/A6068 traffic lights or at your Eastburn Beck location. Simpler and cheaper then putting in a new junction on the dual carriageway IMO.
There are gated foot crossings with red/green lights and electromagnetic locks on the gates to achieve the effect.
There's already a gap in the live rail at crossings, and that gap is a fair bit larger than the width of the crossing. There's also (usually) anti-trespass surfaces installed either side of the crossing. Have there been any instances in recent memory of a person who wasn't trespassing being electrocuted through falling off a crossing? Whilst we can't completely ignore the safety of those who deliberately trespass, I feel that the present arrangement is sufficient, outside of the inherent risks of crossings in general (i.e. regardless of whether the line is electrified).
Rail closure wouldn't be that disruptive, they tend just to be for the beams.
It depends what's buried in the road, and how easy construction access is to both sides. If there's not space for an offline bridge, access probably isn't very easy.
