16
votes
Melbourne's project to remove level rail/road crossings has many benefits
Link information
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- Title
- Learning From Melbourne’s Level Crossing Removal Project
- Authors
- RMTransit
- Duration
- 10:20
- Published
- Dec 14 2024
Comment box
A "level" or at-grade crossing is one in which two paths of travel intersect at the same Y level. For example, a typical intersection is technically an at-grade crossing of two roads.
When a railroad intersects with a road for cars, that at-grade crossing is non-optimal for all parties. Roads with large and fast-moving vehicles are always unsafe for Vulnerable Road Users like pedestrians and cyclists, but this is especially true for roads that are intersected by train lines. The large mass and slow deceleration of a train means that collisions on an at-grade crossing can be disastrous, usually involving derailments and injuries. And unfortunately, no matter how many flashing lights and barrier arms you install on an at-grade rail/road crossing, some impatient car drivers will still drive their cars directly onto the train tracks, get hit by a train, and die, probably killing several people aboard the train too.
To avoid this, there are basically three options:
This video from RMTransit talks about the third option in the context of Melbourne, Australia. The video discusses some of the benefits as well as some of the additional challenges caused by Melbourne's implementation of grade separations. However, the takeaway overall is that a transit service can be significantly improved by grade-separating important routes, especially railroads.
The video talks about regional/suburban commuter trains, but this is also true for inter-city trains on services like Amtrak. One of the reasons Amtrak runs more slowly than it needs to is because the tracks it runs on have many at-grade crossings, which legally require them to run the trains at no more than 79 mph, even if the track curvature allows for higher safe operating speeds. This is one reason why the trains run slowly in areas of otherwise fast tracks, like Connecticut on the US Northeast Corridor.
In the Australian context, Melbourne had a particularly high number of rail level crossings. There were once a couple hundred of them in the metropolitan area.
Removing them was always a piecemeal affair. From 1980-2014, only 20 total crossings were removed, in a sporadic and discontinuous manner.
Every project required their own specialised engineering and construction teams, supply chains, custom-built structures, train-replacements buses, etc. Once the project had finished, everything would wind down, only to be required again years later.
In 2014, an ambitious project called the Level Crossing Removal Project, was proposed. It pledged to remove 50 crossings within a few years.
A major benefit of removing all these level crossings at once is the huge economies of scale. Fixed costs can be split across numerous projects. For example:
This project has become so successful it has been expanded numerous times. Currently, 84 crossings have been removed, 44 train stations rebuilt, and 110 crossings will be gone by 2030.
Overall, per-project costs have been considerably reduced, and more level crossings have been removed since 2014 than during the history of the network prior.
Due to the scale, you can start to do really cool things. Because many of these crossings are being removed at the same time, it opens up opportunities to create continuous viaducts over many kilometres. This connects the communities split by the tracks back together. The freed-up land underneath can be used for parkland, bike paths, trails, playgrounds, outdoor gyms, basketball, and more.
This photo is a good example of the great outcomes you can achieve with scale.
(check the Wikipedia link above for more photos)
This project really goes to show that if you want more infrastructure at a lower cost, you really need to be constantly building. You can't have intermittent one-off projects, or all that institutional knowledge, scale, and cost reduction will disappear.
I lived in an outer Melbourne neighborhood for a couple years, and I remember the aftermath of one of these car-train collisions, which occurred during afternoon rush hour. It caused huge traffic snarls for hours, and all trains had to stop running on that part of the track — meaning everyone had to get off the trains and continue on foot (as there was no way for buses or taxis to reach them). I remember watching hundreds and hundreds of people walking down the streets, trickling between stopped cars, to get to the next train station several miles away.
I grew up in a city that does not have level crossings (due to commuter trains being added relatively late in the city's development), and I had never seen anything like it.
This is generally a really good project, though the video outlines some of the less good parts, particularly around the long running disruptions and some lack of forward planning in the station design - not allowing for future expansion.
There's also quite a few places where removing level crossings are very difficult, this one near where I live is definitely one of the trickiest: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HFsDcstzkTNb8YmX9 The level crossing is below a highway overpass and right next to a creek, so you can't really raise or lower either the road or the train line.
There's also an interesting case in Yarraville where they actually decided to close the level crossing to cars entirely, rather than trying to figure out how to separate cars and trains.
https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/library/level-crossing-removal-project/lxrp/anderson-street-fact-sheet
It's been kind of controversial but I think is a good thing to prioritise bikes and pedestrians over cars.