Subscribe to RSSOnehunga Focus Of Rail Safety Week
The annual rail safety week - which aims to improve safety at rail crossings and reduce trespassing on rail tracks- starts today.
Already this year there have been 27 level crossing collisions and one fatality.
Over the last decade, there were 55 deaths at level crossings and 97 people were been killed as a result of trespassing on train tracks.
Rail Safety campaigner Chris Cairns will be in Auckland this week to add his voice to an Auckland aspect of the campaign - ensuring motorists and pedestrians take care at level crossings once rail services resume on the Onehunga branch line.
On Wednesday he will be having a look at the work being done around the new Te Papapa station to ensure pedestrian safety.
The three kilometre Onehunga branch line has eight level crossings along it.
Work being done on Onehunga's new level crossings
All level crossings along the route will be equipped with barrier arms, flashing lights and bells and pedestrian mazes. Fencing have been installed in some areas along the track to deter people from walking along the tracks.
7 Comments
Simple, start taking out some of the lesser crossings.
The Captain Springs Rd/Church St corner, where there are two diagonal crossings close to each other will be particularly dangerous. When we finally get airport rail, ie high frequency trains, this spot should be trenched-which would also reduce bottlenecks at the lights.
Simple - fix NZ’s crossings. An unbelievable number still have no barrier arms, and I believe there are some which still have no lights and bells.
Fixing pedestrian crossings to have automatic gates needs to happen immediately too.
All of these things would save more lives than billion dollar highways, and you could do them tomorrow.
Yes, as Ian says, trenching will have to happen eventually on this line and on others. Particularly as frequencies increase.
Interesting that the photo is of the Galway/Princes intersection, which I traverse regularly due to involvement with a theatre a couple of streets away. That intersection gives me the willies, it really does, because visibility crossing along Princes is so poor. The barrier arms and associated control boxes haven’t improved things any.
As far as trenching goes, is the Onehunga line double-tracked or single? All the level crossings are single, which will have to be rectified if high-frequency services to the airport ever becomes a reality. That would doubtless happen in conjunction with grade separation of road/rail crossings.
Well, I don’t think the airport line would be more often than once every 30 minutes on the Onehunga line (even after double-tracking) because I doubt the mainline further north could take it, in addition to the future train frequency increases already planned there.
Maybe one could have one train to the CBD along the Onehunga-Newmarket line every 30 mins, and one along the Manukau-Glen Innes Eastern Line every 30 minutes, to provide a 15 minute frequency at the airport for connections to the CBD.
Karl, there is the ability for plent of capacity north of Penrose after the CBD tunnel is built. The at the moment is for one train every 10 mins, that means if you did the same frequency from the airport then you would have a train every 5 minutes between Penrose and Newmarket.