Article: Road barriers to rail service

[ozbob]

From the Herald Sun click here!

Road barriers to rail service

Road barriers to rail service

    Ashley Gardiner
    From: Herald Sun
    June 27, 2011 12:00AM

METRO will not be able to introduce enough services to cope with booming patronage because of Melbourne's level crossings.

The Committee for Melbourne says extra services to cope with passenger growth would cause massive disruptions to the road network.

It has suggested development above crossings to help pay for the estimated $17 billion cost of replacing all of the city's crossings.

Committee chief executive Andrew MacLeod said crossings were the biggest issue blocking the introduction of more services.

Melbourne had 172 level crossings compared with just eight in Sydney, he said.

"If you were to put enough trains on the Dandenong line to meet current demand, not future demand, then the level crossings along the Dandenong line would be shut for the entire morning and evening peak period," Mr MacLeod said.

An effective train service, which had services at least every eight minutes, would cause massive disruption for the roads.

"That means every level crossing closed two out of every four minutes," Mr MacLeod said.

But the cost of replacing them was prohibitively high, with the average cost to replace a level crossing with an overpass or underpass about $100 million each.

Mr MacLeod said the Baillieu Government's promise to remove 10 crossings during its first term means Melbourne will be waiting a long time to be rid of them all.

The reality is do we prioritise trains with a thousand pax on board or cars with a single occupant?  Clearly road rail separation is the desirable outcome, but the problem has not occurred yesterday.  Just further highlights the failings in transport policy around the nation ...

[Jonno]

It is precicely this thinking that is killing our cities. We will not fix our transport problems whilst we continue to think we can build/have "uncongested" roads AND a truly world class public and active transport system.  London has shown the way. It may not have reduced congestion but it has reduced those stuck in that congestion and created a living and breathing sustainable transport paradigm shift.

[Stillwater]

What's often not appreciated sufficiently is that those 30 or 40 single-occupant vehicles at the level crossing is holding up the truck behind that is carring raw product to the manufacturing facility or groceries to the supermarket.  This dead-running time translates to a cost the community pays for goods and food.  Brisbane, not Melbourne or Sydney, is set to become Australia's most congested city.

http://www.btre.gov.au/publications/56/Files/wp71.pdf

[#Metro]

"If you were to put enough trains on the Dandenong line to meet current demand, not future demand, then the level crossings along the Dandenong line would be shut for the entire morning and evening peak period," Mr MacLeod said.

Where's that video by Brizcommuter in Japan? LOL

[Gazza]

And along with those supermarket and raw material trucks, you still do have buses being held up too, and if you want to have a proper PT network, then buses high frequency buses will be interescting the rail network at regular intervals, like a grid (Which is how much of Melbourne's road network is laid out)

I'm presuming it costs $100 mil to do a level crossing on a main road, so minor roads might be cheaper, plus I think if there were a couple of big grade separations done you could get away with just closing level crossings in between, or simply leave them for off peak, with a U turn bay and signage directing to the nearest one in peak hour.
Thing is, they could do say 30 or so crossings for $3 bil , and that's the cost of a road tunnel. I think It's safe to say that if you went across the whole city and did this everywhere, it would do a lot more for transport outcomes in the city, and at the same time would be politically popular (Everybody has a level crossing near them, so no accusations that one electorate is being favoured) so everyone gets a little bit of improvement.

[Stillwater]

There are other innovative, and simple things that can be done.  At the main intersection in Pomona, on the North Coast Line, a red signal lights up at the same time the boom gates, 250m ahead, detect a train approaching and begin to close.  Motorists approaching the intersection can see the red light, even though they can't see the boom gates or railway line.  They have warning to turn at the intersection and use the alternative low-clearence railway underpass.  Something similar could be done at suitable points along the track, where motorists can observe a signal that would allow them to use an alternative route, thus avoiding becoming trapped in the level crossing queue.  It is not as costly as an overpass, but it does avoid being held up.  And it is simple to install.  Yet another item for that 'small projects rail infrastructure fund' we bang on about here.

[Golliwog]

The problem is not every level crossing has a grade seperated alternative nearby, or one thats easy to get to. That said however, I think that many corssings could be closed during peak and while it would be an irritation to drivers, they would probably end up with a similar drive time by permanently using the grade seperated alternative.

That said however, there are a number that you would have to upgrade, say South Pine Rd at Alderley, Samford Rd at Ferny Grove. Dawson Pde would probably need to be done as well unless we want to push cars to run through streets not roads.

[Jonno]

From NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?_r=1

Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives

ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of "environmental zones" where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into "walkers' paradises," said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

"In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving," said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. "Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars."

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city's ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich's busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail's pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city's chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. "Driving is a stop-and-go experience," he said. "That's what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers."

While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has "pedestrianized" parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.

Europe's cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.

What is more, European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.

Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe's traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.

Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously "on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars." But in the past decade, there had been "a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy," he said. And it is having an effect.

After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.