Railway level crossings

A question about : Railway level crossings

Every now and again, I get a bee in my bonnet about some issue or other, and I have recently been enjoying a discussion on this forum about whether or not it is reasonable for cyclists to expect to be allowed to continue with their historic rights to unencumbered access to the public highway when every other group of highway users is extremely tightly regulated, and at considerable cost to themselves.

Near where I live, there is a taxpayer-subsidised railway branch line which passes through several villages on its route from one major town to another. It mostly consists of an occasional single diesel-powered railway coach which trundles across the countryside at a very leisurely pace, with never more than a handful of passengers, except at commuter times.

Each village on its route has a train station which is immediately adjacent to the village High Street’s railway level crossing, and every train stops at every station. I recently stood on the platform at one of the village stations, and I watched my train pull into the station previous to mine and come to a halt in order to drop off and pick up probably no passengers at all. But in the meantime, the road next to where I was standing had been closed by the automated level crossing gates, and a large number of road users, including cyclists, had to stop for many minutes in order to wait for the single train carriage, probably carrying very few passengers, to get its act together and exercise its historic right to be allowed to take priority over the otherwise free access to the public highway.

There are regular reports of fatalities on unmanned level crossings because road users fail to respect the idea that they should have to stand in a stationary queue of road traffic for many minutes at a time, whilst the next scheduled train is stationary at a previous station somewhere down the line.

Modern trains, especially single-coaches, are no less able to stop at a level-crossing than a lorry of a similar size. In fact, since many lorries are not particularly well-maintained, it might well be true that trains are better able to stop.

IMHO, the reason why rural railway branch lines are allowed to continue to shut down the highway purely to suit their own convenience is a historical accident which is in urgent need of review. What would be wrong with the idea that it should be the train carriage which should be required to stop at a level crossing, and wait until its path is clear?

Obviously, none of this applies to existing high-speed mainline rail services, but I very much doubt whether the plans for HS2 include any kind of level crossing.

Best answers:

• You need a hobby/job.
• Depending on the type of train, a train will always have a far greater braking distance than a lorry - an HST type for example takes a mile to stop, it cannot possibly see a mile ahead however.
  However this sort of 'delay' to other road users usually means an underpass or over bridge is built.
  Traffic through LCs is monitored (it has to be for safety in any case) therefore if they are THAT busy with road users a bridge should be built.
  There are many level crossings both manned and unmanned on intercity (high speed) routes.
  Only a special sort of idiot thinks it's worth risking their lives with a 200+ tonne train that takes the best part of a mile to stop.
• Unlike traffic on a road, trains have strict timelines and have to share the lines with other strict timelines of other trains, they cannot pull off a line to allow another train to overtake nor can they simply stop whenever it pleases them, delayed trains can and do cause chaos on the railway network, particularly when taking railway junctions into account.
• Safety reasons aside there are two other significant factors:
• Inertia - it uses far less energy to stop roadgoing vehicles and get them back up to speed again than for a train, which may take many miles to get up to speed
• Uncertainty of timetable - trains generally travel within a fairly short 'window' of time which allows for tight scheduling. Introduce uncertainty and you have to leave much bigger gaps between trains, reducing capacity on an already crowded network, as well as reducing reliability for passengers.

I take your point that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to prevent the barriers coming down when the train is stopping at a station immediately adjacent to the crossing.

• None of the references to the stopping distances of high speed trains have any relevance to the stopping ability of a single carriage which is, in any case, about to stop at the station which is immediately adjacent to the village level crossing. If the frequency of trains is roughly one every hour or two, then the issue of backing up a queue of trains is hardly relevant, whereas the queue of road users occurs every time.
  The urgency is to do with the fact that there are several fatalities every year because of this totally illogical idea that large numbers of highway users are routinely required to wait for many minutes at a time because there is a stationary train carriage a mile or two away!
• Sorry, but thats crapola, a Driver will always be responsible should they hit anything, despite the fact they have almost no chance of avoiding it (trains can't suddenly change directions due to the rails just in case anyone wonders why not?).
  The drivers (and all other staffs) greatest imperative will be safety, despite the pressures from the privatised companies to the timetable etc.
  LCs are not at all 'predictable' take Ufton Nervert -entirely predictable IF there isn't a suicidal bloke who's left his car on it than then derails your train, kills the driver and 6 passengers and traumatises hundreds more.
  However that is the 'LC in the middle of nowhere' only lightly used and controlled by CCTV, it didn't help even then.
  I do take you point about lightly used lines but can honestly say the railway as a whole monitors the demands for road users and rail traffic over every place where the 2 could come into contact -if there was constant significant delay to either from the other party, then something would be done about it (i.e. tunnel/bridge etc).
  There are many branch lines that look to most users 'lightly used by 1 car trains' however the public don't see the huge freight trains that use these later at night, the high speed traffic that uses it when diverted due to engineering works etc.
  I am often delayed at Brockenhurst which is an exceptionally busy LC, however on reflection delays to road users are more significant in this area from animals than trains, they haven't stopped them wandering freely in the past 200 years and I doubt they will anytime soon.