WE live in a strange land…The engineers create a structure ( Bridge/or an ‘over’ or ‘under’ pass) with a design that meets all the ‘Requirements’ as to safety and meeting the design specs(State and Federal DOT Specs) of the particular structure…[banghead]
All that then goes for approval to what is generally, an ‘elected’ or ‘appointed’ oversight committee. The committees tighen the specifications, to save money on the budget; then give a smaller, less expensive property footprint for the site, and the project is re-engineered to fit the parameters of the committee priorities. Radii are created that cause accidents on curved ramps, sight distances are changed; and so it goes; the public must live with while navigating a less than optimal trafficway. [banghead] [my2c]
Just look at the roads (I-84/I-91)created in, and around Hartford, Ct. by way of an example. Clearances were minimum for the traffic loads,approaches and bridges were lowered to where thay would barely clear a legal height trailer truck. vehicle merges were cut to barely manageable distances.[soapbox]
I don’t remember doing so, but I very well might have. It’s very dependent on the design speeds - freeway at 55+ MPH, to arterial at 45 MPH, to urban collector at 25 - 35 MPH (anything less important ought to be closed anyway), and the local topography - do the natural undulations of the land make it easier or harder ?
I wouldn’t argue too much with those lengths as typical for about a 35 MPH road - 400 ft. long vertical curves, leaves about 600 ft. between the PVI’s [1,000 ft. - 2 x (1/2 x 400 ft.)], which for a 30’ rise is a grade of about 5%. For more detail find a highway engineer - I’m the civil kind, yes - but subspecies railroad, mainly.
Notice that the crossings involved in the recent collisions in Valhalla, NY and Oxnard, Calif. are essentially low-speed local streets, so the lengths could well be a little shorter.
For a better guide as to the needed lengths, take a look - using one of the 3D or “Bird’s-Eye” views - at some of the recent ones involving that class of street. Several that come to mind are
Susquehanna St./ SR 145 over the NS Reading Line in South Allentown: N 40 35.421’ W 75 27.650’
Basin St. under the same a little further north: N 40 35.903’ W 75 27.542’
APG Road over Amtrak’s NorthEast Corridor main line in Aberrr-deen, MD: N 39 30.425’ W 76 9.829’
I always note how polite you are.[:)] That’s as opposed to us non-civil engineers, or more commonly, insulting engineers.
A couple of good grade separation examples in and near Rochelle come to mind to illustrate the non-trivial nature of eliminating crossings at grade.
In town, there is the North 7th Avenue overpass, which goes over both the UP and BNSF tracks behind the webcam, plus two other east-west streets. From the railroads to the next level intersections one notes distances of 600-700 feet from the railroads, 350 to 500 feet from the street crossings. The actual total distance above grade appears to be nearly 1,700 feet. This illustrates, I think, the problem of having to deal with nearby roads in the context of providing a suitable vertical curve for the crossing road. In essence, North 7th Avenue is a very long bridge.
Just to the east of town is the crossing of South Dement Road over the UP tracks. It appears that the above-grade approaches from north or south are just under a quarter mile each, this being on a 40 Mph speed limit road.
In 1970, according to National Transportation Statistics, Table 2-5, there were 3,559 Rail-Highway-Grade Crossing accidents resulting in 1,440 fatalities and 3,272 injuries.
In 2013 there were 2,089 accidents resulting in 249 deaths and 952 injuries.
There is also the issue of development near grade crossings. Houses apartments and commercial businesses were built near the grade crossings and it would be very expensive to aqcuire the land to build an overpass.
It might be noted that the British built level crossings that were both manned and impossible to drive through when they first built their railways. That continued until,in an effort to save money, they started putting in US style flashing lights and gates in the 1960’s. Then grade crossing accidents began to soar. Britain also has a much higher level of grade separation than we do in the United States.
Let’s see: Say 100,000 crossings at $5 Million each = $500,000 Million = $500 Billion = $0.5 Trillion dollars. What’s that as a percentage of the Federal budget or national Gross Domestic Product ? As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen famously said, “A $billion here, a $billion there - pretty soon you’re talking about some real money !”
Consider a $10 million grade crossing separation project (bridge). The local government issues 30-year bonds to pay for it, at 6% interest. If I’m doing the math right, those bonds will cost about $2,000 per day, or $83.33 per hour. For that kind of money, the government could equally well hire 2 crossing guards/ “pilot” drivers - 1 for each direction - to shepherd the traffic over the crossing.
Don’t forget dealing with Libertarians, Tea Party types, and fiscal conservatives - among others who will object to any governmental involvement and spending on this scale - esp. if a private corporation (RR) is involved.
What are you willing to give up in order to pay the costs of all the road/railroad grade separations? In life tradeoffs are necessary. The world cannot be made 100% safe.
Many more people are killed and injured at road intersections. Should they (including the local streets in your neighborhood) all be grade separated?
People encounter road intersections every time they drive or ride in a motor vehicle., Many (perhaps most) could live ther whole life without ever crossing a railroad track.
When they presented with their share of the bill, big spending liberals would object too. Many would want the money spent to “help” the poor and others would suddenly become fiscal conservatives.
Figure out the “cost per life saved” by a grade crossing elimination project - not just the initial capital investment costs, but the ongoing ‘opportunity costs’ if that money were spent on other potentially life-saving projects instead - such as improving a really bad highway (only - no RR) intersection, or feeding and vaccinating impoverished children (choose anything else you’d like in here, too), etc. Keep in mind that around 40,000 people are killed each year in the US by road accidents.
What you’ll find is a cost per life in the $10 million and up range for the grade crossing, and much less for any of the others (I don’t have ready access to those figures - maybe someone else can supply them). Which is to say that an argument can be made that it’s good policy to put the $ where it will do the most good - and the eliminating grade crossings isnt one of them, because so much is dependent on and results from the ‘free will’ and bad choices/ actions made by adult drivers, etc.
And don’t tell me that “You can’t put a price on human life”, either.* It’s done every day, either expressly or implicity (which is worse, because then it’s not transparent and not open to an informed discussion, debate, etc. - essentially intellectually dishonest). To duck the issue is like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand.
*“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” - Joseph Stalin (per Tom Clancy, in his ca. 1996 fiction book Executive Orders, in the context of an Ebola virus outbreak . . . ).
No one and no society has unlimited resources, so the truly compassionate thing to do is maximize he number of lives saved for a given expenditure. Simple math will show that’s done by adjusting priorites so that the incremental cost of saving ech life is the same.
In the real world there are various reasons for deviating from this goal, but it doesn’t make sense to expend tens of millions per life saved when there may be places where a life could be saved for tens of thousands. Seems to me that Operation Lifesaver has been a lot more cost effective than grade crossing separation.
As an aside, it should be noted that railroads have often sought to eliminate as many grade crossings as possible. Much of the “Water Level Route” across NY state has only occasional crossings, and the line that ran through the streets through downtown Syracuse, NY was completely relocated, to include a new station.
As for the cost of accidents - recall the infamous Ford Pinto and it’s fuel tank (which was later found to be no more dangerous than any other similar vehicle). Word was that it was cheaper for FoMoCo to pay the damage claims than to do a redesign on the vehicle to mitigate the perceived problem.
What I haven’t addressed yet - and probably won’t, because these are inherently imprecise and incapable of even approximate estimates - are:
The value of the time saved by all the motorists in not having to wait at the crossing for the advance warning signals (flashers, gate descending, etc.) and then the train to pass - obviously highly dependent on train frequency, speed, and type (short commuter vs. long freight); and,
The value of the injuries avoided. We tend to focus on the dramatic - the deaths - but overlook the injuries, which can range from minor to catastrophic (loss of limbs, paralysis, loss of mobility, brain function, etc.). In dollar terms, these can be more expensive than the damages/ liability for a wrongful death.
Really? I don’t know where you are, but here in the Mid Atlantic, the birthplace of American Railroading, there were a great many people and roads LONG before the trains.
In fact, there were BIG cities here long before the trains - so everything had to adapt to the presence of the train to take advantage of the benifits of the train.
In cities like Baltimore, railroads built tunnels and/or elevated as much of the main trackage as possible early on - but in industrial areas it is simply not practical.
Grade crossings are relatively rare compared to the total number of road/railroad crossings in a city like Baltimore and its suburbs. I would bet in the Baltimore metro area it is 100 to one in favor of grade seperated crossings - but some nut always manages to stop his car or truck on that one…
But as explained numerous times above, it is simply not practical in every case.
Some people will always do stupid stuff - personally I don’t loose any sleep over what happens to them - I simply hope they don’t hurt too many others in the process.
And adapt they did - railroads were the lifeblood of commerce and travel, so they were welcomed with open arms. Smaller towns grew around the station/depot - it was a hub of activity.
I can cite one instance (and there were many) where the railroad bypassed a town, building “Podunk Station” well outside of town. “Podunk” withered and died, and the new “Podunk” grew around the station.
Today most people are vaguely aware of railroads, and mostly in the context of bad things - delays at crossings and wrecks, for two. Unless they use them themselves (travellers, commuters and shippers/receivers), the railroad is something they wish would just go away.
Bingo – and here in North Dakota, people raise Cain every time BNSF tries to maintain its “no net gain” policy; i.e., closing an old grade crossing in exchange for a subdivision’s request for a new one.
It’s not by accident that we have tens of thousands of grade crossings in this country. More are sought every day – with the applicants expressing no worries whatsoever about the idiots, their constituents, who will kill themselves in coming years despite all the protections.
And the rest of us are supposed to worry about them? Why? They’re not our constituents. My only concern is the welfare of the railroads and the cost to them of defending the court cases brought by the idiots, their survivors and their lawyers.
I think the reason grade seperation is not mandatory is that the vehemence to have it by those that want it is slightly less than the vehemene by those same people to not spend any of THEIR money to have it.
According to FRA safety data in 2014 there were 267 people killed and 831 people injured in 245 grade crossing incidents. There was a total of 558 fatalities (excluding at grade crossing fatalities) including 526 trespassers at locations other than grade crossings. There were 419 trespassers injured.
There are 209,485 grade crossings (public and private) in the current (2014)inventory. 129,502 crossings are public. There were 2280 grade crossing incidents in 2014.