Every time I see a train crash it sends shivers up my spine... given I spend 3hrs a day on trains, it really chills me when you see train crashes and you realise that a train is nothing but an aluminium tube on rails going at 100km/h.
Yesterday's crash in Victoria is a case in point... when we drove on horse and carts and trains were steam powered life was much simpler then. Now we have express trains and we have Double-B semi trailers both doing 100+ km/h and they cross paths over a dinky little rail crossing. Surely we should be looking at over passes these days... or at least move the barriers further back than 10 feet from the tracks... To think a truck doing such speeds can get so close to a train is so negligent from a design point of view that its criminal.
Rail and Road Engineers take note... don't leave anything to chance. Put the barriers and warning lights back 100m and you will remove such a large amount of risk to make these sort of incidents virtually impossible to reoccur.
5 comments:
Thanks for telling us how to do our jobs Clay - I am sure we didn't know about any of this before you kindly pointed it out.
While you're being so helpful, could you kindly pull the billions of dollars required to fix all the many problems with our transport network out of your arse.
I am surprised that someone who I believe is in Risk Management would be so naive as to think there is no assessment method setup to determine what projects need to go ahead from a safety perspective, based on all the information, rather than whatever incident has cropped up in the news lately to grab the politicians attention and screw with what really should be done.
Case in point: What if the money for upgrading road-rail junctions was taken up when people jumped on the Sophie Delezio bandwagon last year? Jumping up and down about whatever is the latest visible accident leads to hodge podge solutions that end up costly in both time and money while ignoring areas that should have had higher priority.
Might road-rail crossings be in that higher priority - some of them no doubt would be, but to suggest a clean sweep solution ignores the unfortunate practicalities of the world we live in.
Totally disagree mate...
The honest truth of RM is that it is not being applied in this case and to ask a large road vehicle like a Double-B to come to a stop from 100km/h at a distance of 10m from a track whilst a say 120km/h train goes past is a fallacy of old school design.
It does not take a huge amount of assessment nor money to move the boom gates (and I have since learnt there wasn't a gate, just a fucking red flashing light) back to say 100m from said crossing.
My point is that the only reason that there is no progress is that there are so many cost cuts due to the semi-corporatisation of ex-govt bodies that in the areas of maintenance and improvements (case in point Sydney Water) that the existing infrastructure is left to rot and age in comparison to modern standards.
There's no need to spend $100M on each bloody crossing with an overpass, but rather move a gate post and put a fence up...
A clean sweep common sense approach would work and the unfortunate practicalities you speak of are budget cuts to make a profit of a previously non-profit govt organisation.
I know this because I have worked in Risk for the railways... it is a scary place and I am surprised there are not more Kerangs, Waterfalls, Glenbrooks and Granville's.
Maintenance... start doing it!
"The honest truth of RM is that it is not being applied in this case and to ask a large road vehicle like a Double-B to come to a stop from 100km/h at a distance of 10m from a track whilst a say 120km/h train goes past is a fallacy of old school design."
Don't tell me you honestly believe there is no RM done at all? We are talking about a fairly conservative government organisation here remember? This old school design comment, would you care to elaborate on any basis you have for this? If you have access to any sort of road design manual, I'm pretty sure you'll find the standard stopping sight distance for 110km/h is a mite larger than 10m, and that there is a fair bit related to that sight distance involved in designing any part of any any road.
"It does not take a huge amount of assessment nor money to move the boom gates (and I have since learnt there wasn't a gate, just a fucking red flashing light) back to say 100m from said crossing."
Clay you do realise that the purpose of a gate is basically as a deterrant to prevent people from thinking they can skip over before a train arrives don't you? Their actual role in alerting people to the potential hazard is very minimal compared to that of the flashing red light (and siren) you so readily disparage. Thus you will tend to see them only in urban areas, as their usefulness in a rural area (and take a look at google maps to find where this happened, its pretty rural) is practically zilch, and they provide a lovely maintenance tar pit in a rural area to boot. Seriously, next time you're at a level crossing, try and work out what alerts you first, the lights and siren, or a gate.
In a rural area like this, the accident is likely to have been caused by one of four things (considering the train has right of way): driver losing control to the point where he had no chance to stop due to another hazard close by, fatigue, lack of sight distance to the hazard or speeding. If its the first or third, then there is probably a different hazard that needs to be sorted out before looking at the crossing. If its either of the other two, earlier warning and driver education is pretty much all you can do, and considering the level of warning already likely to be there simply to meet the standards, I'd say the education component has a much larger bearing on the outcome.
Moving the lights up a bit might have the desirable effect, but consider a couple of things before blithely throwing it around as the solution to all problems. Driver behaviour - did you know that by moving the lights up there will be a certain percentage of drivers who will ignore it due to it no longer being directly relevant to the hazard? Think of it as the boy who cried wolf syndrome. This effect is easiest to demonstrate by looking at the effect of speed camera signs. Someone not familiar with the road will slow down at the first speed camera sign, while someone who is familiar will ignore them until the relevant area. You might scoff at this, but its a real consideration.
Do you know what the road conditions are like in the vicinity of the crossing? Are there any corners, dips or crests close by? These would all impact the effectiveness of any attempts to warn the driver earlier. Many of these level crossing are setup on a fairly tight S bend, which is often more of a hazard than the crossing itself for a fatigued driver (I say this from experience, having had a few scares on the one near Nyngan a few times while never having seen a train there).
Did you know that there is environmental legislation associated with the sirens on the flashing lights? Its not necessarily the slam dunk that you think that moving the lights and siren would be legal. I can almost guarantee some fucktard has put in complaints about the noise the siren makes before.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be questions asked about what happened to learn from what occurred Clay, just hoping the above examples will provide enough food for thought to cut down on the knee-jerk moral outrage and accusations of general incompetence that are so easy to throw around.
"Clay you do realise that the purpose of a gate is basically as a deterrant to prevent people from thinking they can skip over before a train arrives don't you? Their actual role in alerting people to the potential hazard is very minimal compared to that of the flashing red light (and siren) you so readily disparage."
Would the truck crashing through the boom gate fence say 100m from the track not alert the driver of the truck that he 'may' be doing something wrong?
The findings to date on this is that the truck didnt see the light/train/track until it was too late. The fact he hit the train at nearly full speed probably saved his own life as it "bounced" off the train rather than being close to stationary. You know, that thing called Physics (F=ma and all that)
If perchance he had hit a barrier 100m earlier as opposed to a train doing great speeds, that may have actually solved the problem.
Its not risk management mate, its common sense!
"Moving the lights up a bit might have the desirable effect, but consider a couple of things before blithely throwing it around as the solution to all problems."
Thats what I hate about govt depts... they hide from the fact that stupid funding decisions prevent them from doing the decent thing and instead talk about how outsiders simply chuck solutions around "blithely"...
At Kerang, it was a straight road with a 100km/h speed limit, straight, clear line of sight to the train and according to locals no gate or barrier, just a red flashing light... I think that that is just plain ridiculous.
11 or so (they're still joining limbs together i presume) people are dead... I dont think its unreasonable to demand a solution that is not risk engineered, but is simply common sense.
Ripple strips would be a much better solution than a gate Clay, and much lower maintenance to boot. Put em 3-400m prior to the crossing and they should wake people up in plenty of time. Of course if some of the rumours flying about are true, I doubt whatever was done would have helped.
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