[davedx]

In the Netherlands there was a horrible accident a couple of years ago with children who'd been picked up by daycare staff in a small electric bicycle wagon where 4 of the children were killed. I still remember the feeling of reading the headline. Since then I've read that municipalities are accelerating the transition from railway crossings in urban centres to underpasses, despite the huge cost of this re-engineering. I think the problem with railway crossings is that they are just inherently dangerous, and the severity side of the risk equation if you get a crossing wrong is huge (potentially multiple people being killed).

I like the Dutch approach here: replace them entirely.

https://www.bd.nl/oss/vier-kinderen-4-tot-11-jaar-omgekomen-...

[tialaramex]

Yup. British policy is the same. No new at-grade crossings. Existing at-grade crossings to be closed where possible. Where a crossing cannot be closed, upgrade it to achieve acceptable safety margins, revisit annually.

There are three different examples near me of crossings they haven't closed with very different scenarios.

1. A large industrial estate built on the tidal river is reached via a road only barely above sea level. The road is used by lots of heavy articulated vehicles (it is after all an industrial estate) yet it crosses a four track railway that serves both freight and passenger traffic to a major city. Result? A major at-grade crossing which is closed to road traffic for about 10-15 minutes at a time as much as three times in an hour. This crossing has full barriers, and a pedestrian bridge (so pedestrians needn't wait for the barriers). There's no way to dig down (it'd flood) and a road bridge would have to be very large to carry those articulated trucks but there's nowhere to put it. I expect this crossing will remain until forces of gentrification some day mean the industrial estate turns into housing and they just close the crossing altogether.

2. Where that same railway once went through the city to deliver rich people to the ocean liner terminal itself the passenger trains these days are diverted through a tunnel under the city - however a few freight trains per month still make the journey to the docks. So a wide city road goes over an at-grade crossing that is rarely needed, most users probably have no idea it's a crossing. This is a full gated crossing, but it's manually operated. A crew will come out, switch on stop lights, block the road, move the gates, then one train drives in or out of the docks, then they unwind everything. Because it's so seldom used a bridge seems unacceptably costly, and because it's manual I'd guess the residual risk is low so I expect this to remain in use essentially forever.

3. A rail branch towards another coastal city cuts across a residential street I used to live on. This one I can imagine closing. It's currently using full barriers but has no pedestrian route except to just walk to the nearest bridge. I think sooner or later somebody will get themselves killed, clambering over the barriers or whatever and they'll just close it because there's no way to make it any safer other than closing it.

[bobthepanda]

Interestingly enough, Japan has a crazy amount of rail crossings, including smack in the middle of busy districts like Shibuya in Tokyo where the gates are down for the majority of the hour; yet they seem to have less fatal accidents than peers. I wonder what's driving the difference there?

[rsynnott]

As a bonus, replacing them also increases line capacity and reliability. The level crossing down the road from me closes something like every three minutes at peak times; any issues cause delays.

[a3n]

A railway crossing is the sudden appearance of an industrial environment in an otherwise non industrial setting.

[brazzy]

Oh fuck, apparently the bicycle malfunctioned and couldn't brake. If only the rider had had the presence of mind to just steer sideways as hard as posible and take a roll instead...

Edit: I'm not trying to but any blame on her. It's easy to think in hindsight of what could have been done, another thing entirely to do it in seconds while panicking.

[davedx]

Yeah of course, completely natural.

My point is that even with all these insights into how human perception works, I agree with the strategy that it's best to bypass railways completely by going under/over them. And if it's doable in a densely populated country like the Netherlands then it's doable anywhere. (Some of the underpasses that have been built in recent years have required significant changes to the whole surrounding layout of the town, like one they completed in Bilthoven near Utrecht. Yet it was done.)

[mschuster91]

> And if it's doable in a densely populated country like the Netherlands then it's doable anywhere.

There's three different "doables" at play here:

- technically doable: can you actually convert the level crossing to an underpass or a bridge? For example, it's hard to do an under/overpass when there is a river 10m away, or when everything bar the road/rail and a bit of space is filled with buildings.

- financially doable: is there actually enough budget in the city/responsible authority's coffers?

- politically doable: will the population support the necessary construction works and the limitations that come with it? Like, will there be heavy protests of people that rely on either the rail or the road to get to work and would require massive amounts of time to bypass?

It is rare that there is a combination of all three being true, with the exception of course being tragic disasters with people and especially children dying as such events usually eliminate the political and financial blockers.

[brazzy]

Yes, of course underpasses are the categorically better solution - if you can get the budget, which is often a hard problem. At least they have the positive side effect of speeding up road traffic significantly on busy crossings.