[ehnto]

Brightline Rail Company gets it. They are predominantly a real estate play, buying up land surrounding their "higher" speed rail services. They have a Cali project currently though it is to connect to Las Vegas.

Buy the land, build the rail connector and enjoy the boost in land value you created.

It feels like everyone wants rail, benefits from rail and advocates for rail, but no rail gets done.

[inferiorhuman]

Brightline rail has the worst safety record in the country. They're too cheap to even put up fencing around their track. The only thing Brightline gets is sacrificing a few lives to make a buck.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/799962246/brightline-nations-...

[asdff]

If you see some of the videos that often end up on reddit it is absurd how many cars end up stalled on the tracks in front of an active crossing in Florida. I wouldn't blame bright line really, the odds of having a car break down right on a rail crossing are so astonishingly small that at least a few of these incidents are probably outright fraud. People also sometimes ignore the gates and drive around thinking they can beat the train. Maybe they are used to a miles long freight train going a few mph where that idiotic move hasn't burned them yet.

Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.

[inferiorhuman]

  Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up
  to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over
  the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.

Such as? Brightline has the worst record in the country. In the Bay Area Caltrain runs similar speeds, for a similar length of track, and still manages half the annual deaths. And, yes, Caltrain deals with people on the tracks fairly regularly. And, yes, I know nothing's perfect – someone just managed to drive right into a BART train last Monday. Regardless, Brightline is doing a worse job than any other rail company and they're resistant to any obvious (and relatively low cost) improvements. Caltrain, while already having a better safety record, is moving towards grade separated crossings to safely facilitate higher speeds. Grade separation is way more expensive than the shit that Brightline is refusing to do.

[asdff]

I would guess its just that people are used to slow moving freight trains compared to an 80mph train in florida. I can't otherwise explain why so many Floridians insist on driving past a rail gate. I can't blame brightline when they seem to have the exact same sort of flashing light and gate in socal without this safety record. So in these two cases the train is operating at the same speed, the level of infrastructure is the same, so the only factor I could think to be different that might explain the difference in safety is the culture of the drivers. It just doesn't make sense to knock brightline imo when they are just doing what other rail agencies are doing, and its probably something that's federally standardized somehow anyway, so if anything blame falls on the agency writing standards that aren't enough to meet the realities.

[ehnto]

Not sure where the rail with no fencing is, but it's pretty common around the world to not have fencing on long stretches of track in unpopulated areas.

I just read the article you linked, and while I am just taking the article interviewees word for it, it sounds like they are concerned about pedestrian control at intersections in suburbs. Fair enough concern, but that is going to be up to the state to regulate I think. Rail companies will cut where they can, it's still a heavy industry, not exactly the poster children of ethics.

[fy20]

Many parts of Europe do not have fencing around railways, yet this isn't an issue here?

[inferiorhuman]

Is it? Most, if not all, of the rail I've seen in Europe is either grade separated or access restricted in some manner. The UK in particular stands out to me.

Brightrail runs 130 kph trains through populated areas, mostly at grade including crossings. Caltrain runs a comparable system in length and speed and sees roughly half the annual deaths. Do you have a better explanation?

[LeanderK]

I think you have to differentiate. At least in germany, most rail is not fenced off and when we do, we do not use fences but instead sound barriers. I think faster rail is usually behind sound barriers in populated ares, and slower commuter rail is often not fenced off. We do not have many at-grade crossings in more populated areas though, they are really only present on the country-side so I think the rail-infrastructure is not that "present". Nobody really walks or drives over rails usually and it's usually naturally separated, so you can't enter tracks by accident and therefore accidents are quite rare.