On Tuesday, October 12, 2004, at 11:39 AM, Elizabeth Greenbaum wrote:
. It all happens surprisingly quickly. That's the scary part about this whole thing. It just seems like an accident waiting to happen.
Perhaps for the driver of an SUV yakking on a cell phone it is... But a good driver approaches any rail crossing with some caution, quite aware that the warning lights and crossarms could fail and the only warning they'll have is a look down the tracks and listening for the noise, bells, and horns of a train. Having watched trains as a vocation and avocation for years I've found that even when Amtrak's running near 80 miles per hour on the Northstar Corridor I have plenty of warning of it's coming. In fact, savvy motorists don't bother trying to outrun the Empire Builder because they know it will take less than 10 seconds to pass and they'll be on their way. BTW, if you want a real challenge of your driving skills and vehicle, try keeping up with the Empire Builder!
So the real cause of rail crossing accidents is almost always driver error rather than any design deficencies. Granted, if we were to near completely rebuild the billion dollar investment that the Hiawatha Light Rail and Expressway are we could have complete grade separations, and the Darwin Award competitors would have to really work at it to hit a train. Some would no doubt still succeed. That's a billion dollars to idiot proof just a few miles of the over 30,000 miles of rails in America that see passenger trains, so clearly making all those grade crossings safe for incompetent drivers would cost in the trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars that rail infrastructure is unlikely to see given the competing demands for over a trillion dollars just to rebuild, never mind add capacity to, our Interstate, National, and Trunk Highway Systems.
Suffice to say, our society can ill afford to spend trillions of dollars in reconstruction to dumb down our road and rail systems to the point where a cell phone junkie in an SUV with bald tires and no brakes can race through intersections at twice the speed and blood alcohol limit with impunity. Perhaps some software hacks will improve the timing of the lights on Hiawatha, but in the long run we need some politicians with the political courage to take incompetent drivers of the roads.
From North Side Station,
Dyna Sluyter
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