10-30-2017, 05:30 PM
(10-30-2017, 04:05 PM)KevinT Wrote:(10-29-2017, 11:10 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Thanks for the fence location. That is weird … it’s like they don’t think at all about desire lines and where you need to strongly guide people and where you just need to keep toddlers from running into a dangerous situation. I can think of a lot of sidewalks running along roads that need fences separating them from roads before any sort of fence is needed to separate pedestrians from a track carrying just LRVs travelling slowly as they exit the station with nothing on the other side of the track.
The vehicle closest to the fence line will be slowly accelerating out of the station, the vehicle on the farther track will be decelerating into it, and still carrying a lot of speed/energy into any potential pedestrian collision beyond the station platform area.
The point is not that it’s A-OK for a train to hit a pedestrian there, the point is that of all the places in the city where you need to put an ugly fence to keep people safe, that location is way, way down the list. There is no reason for pedestrians to want to cross there (no desire lines), so people won’t be deliberately crossing anyhow, and the train speed is lower there than many other places, including locations where the train is separated from pedestrians by nothing more than a regular curb. So all that can reasonably be justified is a small fence to keep people, especially toddlers, from accidentally stepping into the tracks. But small fences of that sort probably ought to line all our major streets. And toddlers won’t be getting to the further and more dangerous track anyhow, whether or not there is a fence there.