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GO Transit
Can you imagine if we put that much thought and effort into eliminating car crashes?

What a world that would be.
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(02-10-2023, 04:57 PM)Acitta Wrote: The CTV article has illustrations of the incident. Railway safety highlighted after 2019 incident where woman and child were hit by Go train
The lack of a train whistle meant that the pedestrians were unaware of the second train.

It's true. But with the gates down, lights flashing and bells sounding, that does indicate some level of danger in crossing those tracks.
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(02-10-2023, 06:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(02-10-2023, 04:57 PM)Acitta Wrote: The CTV article has illustrations of the incident. Railway safety highlighted after 2019 incident where woman and child were hit by Go train
The lack of a train whistle meant that the pedestrians were unaware of the second train.

It's true. But with the gates down, lights flashing and bells sounding, that does indicate some level of danger in crossing those tracks.

Not to mention the signs indicating multiple tracks. If I remember correctly, the video shows behaviour that is plainly irresponsible and obviously self-destructive, and we should not be looking for excuses to push the responsibility anywhere other than where it belongs, on the person who ignored an extensive installation of safety equipment working properly to warn them away from the area.
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(02-10-2023, 09:16 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(02-10-2023, 06:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: It's true. But with the gates down, lights flashing and bells sounding, that does indicate some level of danger in crossing those tracks.

Not to mention the signs indicating multiple tracks. If I remember correctly, the video shows behaviour that is plainly irresponsible and obviously self-destructive, and we should not be looking for excuses to push the responsibility anywhere other than where it belongs, on the person who ignored an extensive installation of safety equipment working properly to warn them away from the area.

It is easy to think that the warnings pertained to the train that was visible. Two people safely crossed before the two people who were hit, so it was easy for them to conclude that it was safe to cross. It wasn't clear to them that there was another train which they couldn't see which didn't blow its horn. One of the changes as a result of this investigation is that trains are now supposed to blow their horn. You are right that technically the adult pedestrian was at fault, but the report makes it clear that poor crossing design was a factor.
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(02-10-2023, 12:34 PM)KevinT Wrote: I'm of two minds about that article. It would not surprise me at all that there are regulatory gaps in the system, but it seems that the sheer neglect/stupidity on display by the child's guardian is now being completely overlooked.

...and she's now suing.
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We act like this with car crashes, why not train crashes.

It does not matter who is at fault, what matters is preventing it from happening again.

Just because we can "blame" the person who was hit does not mean there are not mitigating factors which could be addressed. The article indicates that CN routinely exceeds the 5 minute delay for the crossing when doing switching work, with lots of spurious activations. That clearly encourages this behaviour.

Also, can you put yourself in the shoes of the people there? Did they just wait 5 minutes while no trains come, now one finally clears the intersection, how long would you wait? Would you be tempted? What if someone in front of you went through safely. Are you standing there with an anxious child? Are you late for your next activity because of the delay? We need to have empathy and not just demonize people.

(FWIW the same is probably true for drivers, but I also think that bad driver's behaviour is objectively less sympathetic and driving is an activity which we should demand higher standards for).
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I hope at least this leads to a quicker implementation of grade separation.
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I'd like to see a grade separation there, but I'd also like to see a rationalization of the road design. Right now it's just a mess.
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(02-11-2023, 10:23 AM)neonjoe Wrote: I hope at least this leads to a quicker implementation of grade separation.

For pedestrians and bicycles. Close the road, it’s not needed.
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(02-11-2023, 04:35 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: We act like this with car crashes, why not train crashes.

It does not matter who is at fault, what matters is preventing it from happening again.

Up to a point. I hope everybody understands that it is fundamentally impossible to protect against sufficiently irresponsible behaviour.

Quote:Just because we can "blame" the person who was hit does not mean there are not mitigating factors which could be addressed. The article indicates that CN routinely exceeds the 5 minute delay for the crossing when doing switching work, with lots of spurious activations. That clearly encourages this behaviour.

OK, that’s a good point. The spurious activations are especially concerning; when it comes to safety systems, it’s not actually “fail safe” to activate spuriously because it encourages people to ignore the signals. I remember seeing a video of a British rail crossing where the crossing “arms” are basically gates that, when closed, make it almost impossible to cross. Why were they “needed”? Because the crossing arms drop about 5 minutes, no exaggeration, before the train comes. Of course people ignored them.

Quote:Also, can you put yourself in the shoes of the people there? Did they just wait 5 minutes while no trains come, now one finally clears the intersection, how long would you wait? Would you be tempted? What if someone in front of you went through safely. Are you standing there with an anxious child? Are you late for your next activity because of the delay? We need to have empathy and not just demonize people.

(FWIW the same is probably true for drivers, but I also think that bad driver's behaviour is objectively less sympathetic and driving is an activity which we should demand higher standards for).
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(02-11-2023, 04:35 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: We need to have empathy and not just demonize people.

Noting that there were multiple warnings telling people not to cross is not demonizing people.

Yes, additional warnings will be good, but that doesn't change the fact that she made a poor, high-risk decision to cross an acrive railway crossing -- and with a child in tow, yet.
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(02-11-2023, 04:09 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(02-11-2023, 04:35 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: We need to have empathy and not just demonize people.

Noting that there were multiple warnings telling people not to cross is not demonizing people.

Yes, additional warnings will be good, but that doesn't change the fact that she made a poor, high-risk decision to cross an acrive railway crossing -- and with a child in tow, yet.

And the report raised several mitigating factors that influenced her decision. Nothing occurs in a vacuum.

Demonizing is a shortcut for saying.... "Well she made a poor, high-risk decision to cross an active railway crossing with a child in two"...and concluding that with..."Therefore SHE is the problem, not the railway crossing"

...I feel this is where many of the earlier comments here (and obviously everywhere else) were leading. It's exactly what we do for car crashes, and it's exactly the thinking that keeps us trapped in a dangerous, poorly designed world. If I'm wrong and that isn't where people were leading, then I'm sorry for misinterpreting.

It's also not the case that a report cannot place the blame on a specific individual. Some NTSB air crash investigations have come to that conclusion. But this report doesn't do that, it identifies specific mitigating factors, and it approached the situation with an open mind and didn't jump to conclusions.

It's great our accident investigators are able to do that. I wish they'd investigate all car crashes this way.
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(02-11-2023, 05:00 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(02-11-2023, 04:09 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Noting that there were multiple warnings telling people not to cross is not demonizing people.

Yes, additional warnings will be good, but that doesn't change the fact that she made a poor, high-risk decision to cross an acrive railway crossing -- and with a child in tow, yet.

And the report raised several mitigating factors that influenced her decision. Nothing occurs in a vacuum.

Demonizing is a shortcut for saying.... "Well she made a poor, high-risk decision to cross an active railway crossing with a child in two"...and concluding that with..."Therefore SHE is the problem, not the railway crossing"

That is not what I said. There were mitigating factors, but there were also many warnings, and most people at the crossing waited for the crossing to open. This situation likely occurs daily, and yet this is the only accident that I am aware of. So, I think it's not unreasonable to conclude that her decision and action also contributed to the accident.
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Perhaps cheaper than grade separation would just be flipping CN's yard around: There are 8 tracks in that yard, the closest 3 of which to the main tracks are also connected to the east. It appears there's enough land to connect the other 5 in the east as well, and with that done they could dead-end all the tracks in the west to eliminate the back-and-forth switching across Lancaster. No doubt CN would insist on being paid to do this by Metrolinx, and would heavily pad their numbers the same way they once soaked VIA Rail for the Kingston sub upgrades, but I bet it would still be a lot cheaper than grade separating Lancaster.

In theory that could create bottlenecks for GO's access to the Shirley layover yard, but not as much as you'd think. If you look closely, you'll see that GO can't directly access the west end of their yard from the south track without crossing over west of Lancaster anyways, so they're already regularly blocked out by CN's switching activities. Also, CN often parks cars for days on the north track under the River Rd pedestrian bridge, so I doubt that flipping their yard to east-only access would have much effect at all on GO, at least not today in a pre-AD2W world.
...K
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(02-13-2023, 03:27 PM)KevinT Wrote: Perhaps cheaper than grade separation would just be flipping CN's yard around

Freight companies releasing their grip on their assets? That's a nice fantasy. :'P CN and CP - heck even just short line railroads - are not known for giving things up or even negotiating, sadly.
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