ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

Frankly, I think the root of our disagreement here is that for some reason you refuse to actually think about rail safety, instead retreating to blind application of rules.

I think you go too far here. Canard is clearly thinking about safety.  Just in a different way from you. No need to claim they aren't.

I’m not sure what word I should be using. The intent of the italics is to suggest that in this particular case when I say “think” I don’t just mean that the topic is consciously present in the mind, but that actual analysis is being done on it, which I don’t believe is the case. I explained briefly why I think it is reasonably safe for those people to cross; the response was just a context-free reference to a website, with absolutely no attempt to explain why I’m wrong (i.e., why it actually isn’t reasonably safe to cross). For example, in another situation (not this one), somebody could explain that from first detecting the train to being under its wheels I would have less than 3s, which is not enough time to clear off the crossing safely and reliably.

I agree with ijmorlan that the Operation Lifesaver stuff goes over the top. You'd think that all trains are stealth machines traveling at HSR speeds on any track at any time.
Rails should be seen as another road, with a different kind of vehicle. A vehicle that may be much more infrequent, but absolutely will not stop for you. It's a different kind of dangerous from a vehicular road, but we made tradeoffs about danger every time we cross one of those too.

Well put. Spur Line < LRT < mainline freight < HSR. And to a large extent this is reflected in the crossing requirements, ranging from nothing in some cases along the Spur Line up to no level crossings permitted at all on HSR. To be fair to Operation Lifesaver, my impression is that they emphasize mainline heavy rail, which tends to have high speeds, low frequencies, and long trains. So it’s easy to believe a line is abandoned — one could cross daily for years and never see a train — and believe that playing on it is no problem at all. Urban LRT is very different and is really much more like a bus every few minutes. So intrinsically much safer than a busy road, which in addition to the bus every few minutes has a constant stream of cars and trucks.