ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

If the gates are up, which I assume they were, if the buses were able to drive through, then legally ringing bells are to be treated as a stop sign.

But what is transit authority policy? For years they stopped at all railway crossings, even though it is (as I recall) only required by law where there is a crossbuck but no gates (or is it no lights, not no gates?).

Today I observed this again. I was walking south along the tracks (that is, on the path next to the tracks ). A train came through shortly after I crossed. The bells stopped briefly then started again. Then I heard a weird grinding sound. One of the gates was moving up and down near the top end of its swing. It did this again, apparently under motor control as far as I can tell, several times, then eventually froze almost all the way up. So the traffic light was showing a green, gates were up (except for one that was not quite up), but lights and bells were going.

Traffic moved through slowly; reactions seemed to vary from “not going to go” to “what’s a train?” I think at least one bus just sat there. I was curious so I stayed. After a few minutes the next train came so the gates went back down. This time when they went up it was fine so traffic returned to normal fairly quickly.

The first and most obvious recommendation is that transit bus drivers should be clearly told that if they have a green and the gates are up at the LRT track, then flashing red lights are a stop sign. It’s simply ridiculous for them to sit there blocking traffic for 5-10 minutes. Having them phone control before going through wouldn’t be a bad idea — LRT drivers could be told and could watch extra carefully.

Next, they need to be tracking these incidents. Maybe they already are; I hope so, because with the amount of wires and equipment they installed and how long it took it would be completely absurd for there not to be a computer somewhere logging every activation and deactivation of lights, gates, etc.

And finally, they need to find reliable equipment. As others have pointed out, this should be mature technology. Note that the failure here is of the actual electromechanical device which is the gate, not the larger software-controlled system.

This is true, I have no idea what policy is, I only know that the HTA says that ringing bells and lights are equivalent to a stop and yield, not a stop and wait like gates are.

This confirms my earlier speculation. It is utterly absurd that this is not a solved problem, the fact these gates do not function correctly is just as unforgivable as the fact that there are missing pedestrian accesses to our stations, and that our payment system does not function (in fact stole ~2.75 from me today).  Frankly, I'm starting to worry that things we cannot obviously know are wrong, will be wrong with our system.  When engineers and implementors fail so broadly, it gets increasingly hard to have confidence.