11-13-2019, 08:30 PM
(11-13-2019, 01:30 PM)jason897 Wrote: I think I described this exact issue at Mill/Ottawa a while back. I wonder if a valid solution for University crossing would be if the train just passed purposely leave the gates down & railway crossing lights flashing a bit longer until the traffic light is ready to change to green...
The gates controlling the sidewalks need to go up. I don’t remember if both of the gates controlling motor traffic are separate from the sidewalk ones. If they are then this could work. I’m not sure what I think about this. There might be places where it is severely inconvenient to have the gates stay down when the train is gone — what if it’s hard to have the gates stay down only for movements that still have a red? This could be viewed as pandering to ignorance — drivers simply need to learn to follow both sets of signals. But of course that probably isn’t going to happen unless we change our whole attitude toward driver licensing.
It would probably be better to get rid of the gates entirely and control it only with traffic lights. I believe railway crossing lights pre-date traffic lights, and now that we have traffic lights it’s not really clear to me why we need two different kinds of lights; and anybody who can’t obey a red has no business driving, so it’s not clear to me what the gates are really for. But of course that is probably against a regulation.
On another side note, has anybody noticed that the crossing in the park just north of the bridge over the creek stays activated way too long? I mean at least a minute or two after the trains have gone by.