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Introduction
Railway safety is a crucial aspect of rail operation the world over.
Malfunctions resulting in accidents usually get wide media coverage even
when the railway is not at fault and give to rail transport, among the
uninformed public, an undeserved image of inefficiency often fueling
calls for immediate reforms. This paper is aimed at helping the railway
administrations concerned to strengthen their safety culture and develop
the monitoring tools required by modern safety management.
Rail/road intersections are very unique, special, potentially dangerous
and yet unavoidable in the World. Here two different entities with entirely
different responsibilities, domains, performances come together and
converge for a single cause of providing a facility to the road user. During
the normal operation also, there is every possibility of accidents
occurring even with very little negligence in procedure and the result is of
very high risk.
The potential for accidents is made higher as the railways control only
half the problem. The other half, meanwhile, cannot really be said to be
controlled by one entity, as even though traffic rules and road design
standards supposedly exist, the movements of road users are not
organized and monitored by one specific entity as rigidly as rail
movements. The railway systems of Asia and the Pacific are no exception
to this. Each year, accidents at level crossings not only cause fatalities or
serious injuries to many thousands of road users and railway passengers,
but also impose a heavy financial burden in terms of disruptions of
railway and road services and damages to railway and road vehicles and
property. A very high number of these collisions are caused by the
negligence, incompetence or incapacity of road vehicle drivers, who by
and large operate their vehicles in environments in which safety
consciousness is practically non-existent.
Since it is the railway which must bear the responsibility for ensuring that
it is protected from the transgressions by road users (despite the fact
that in many countries the law gives it priority of passage over road
users), it is the railway which also has to shoulder most of the financial
burden of providing this protection. Similarly, it is the railway, which has
most of the responsibility for educating road users on the safe use of its
Cost effective system for Railway level crossing protection – Konkan Railway
level crossings. Notwithstanding this, it appears that in many regions,
railways are ill-equipped to be in a position to monitor level crossing
safety effectively and to take both corrective and pro-active measures to
improve the safety of their level crossing installations.
Scope: To
 Review the present status of level-crossing accidents
 Present statistics, indicators, technology and problems
relating to the systems adopted for level-crossing
protection; in practice
 Analyze various alternative systems for level-crossing
protection; and
 Make recommendations pertaining to the selection of
cost-effective protection systems.
Methodology:
The following analyses are considered:
1. Evaluation of the requirements of a Safety Management
Information System which adequately addresses the needs
of railway management for information on level crossing
safety performance;
2. Review of the essential and effective safety,
enhancements, measures and priorities for level crossings;
3. Assessment of level crossing safety performance and
safety measures in some countries;
4. Examination of Cost Benefit Analysis of investments on
level crossing safety enhancement;
5. Review of the technical attributes and suitability of
Networked Anti Collision System (ACD) for level crossing
protection system;
6. Recommendations and guidelines for adoption of
networked ACD Systems by railways.
Cost effective system for Railway level crossing protection – Konkan Railway
II. Necessity
In general it appears that, Railway safety, and particularly safety at
intersections between roads and railway lines, is perhaps not accorded
the priority it deserves.
Much of this has to do with the lack of a strong safety ethos. Personal
safety, as such, is not highly valued and hence safety consciousness is
not generally something which is stressed in educational program, either
in schools or in the wider community.
Nevertheless, the high rates of economic growth experienced in the
region within recent years, coupled with the growth in personal
disposable incomes and the related growth in motor vehicle populations
have stressed the need for attitudinal change as far as personal safety is
concerned. There is little doubt that road accidents and their associated
casualties have increased almost in parallel with the explosive growth in
the vehicle populations of several countries of the region.
The evidence is that, accidents at the intersections between road and rail
contribute only a very small proportion of total road accidents in most
countries of the region. However, it is a growing proportion as increasing
road construction and road vehicle populations create greater
opportunity for level crossing accidents to happen.
Additionally, level crossing accidents tend to have casualties which are
disproportionate with their number and frequency within the overall road
safety picture. For example, where accidents involving collisions between
two or more motor vehicles usually generate limited casualties, collisions
between road vehicles and trains at level crossings can, and often do,
generate multiple casualties of both rail and road users, particularly when
such collisions result in train derailments. Therefore, too much is at stake
to allow level crossing accidents to grow uncontrolled.
Of paramount importance in any program is to improve level crossing
safety and the need to have access to continuously updated information –
to detailed level crossing inventories, to details of accident
circumstances, causes and casualties as well as to details of the growth in
the road and rail traffic passing level crossings.
Cost effective system for Railway level crossing protection – Konkan Railway
Such a program will depend upon regular hazard assessments being
made of individual level crossing locations, in order to allow calculation
of accident risks and probabilities and to be able to establish valid
priorities for safety enhancement measures at level crossings. Essentially
this will require the establishment of a comprehensive Safety
Management System, of which a Safety Management Information System
will be a vital component. Thus the characteristics of a Safety
Management Information System and the application of Quantified Risk
Analysis (QRA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) techniques to level
crossing safety management is given priority.
Finally, technical descriptions of the wide range of level crossing
protection systems and technologies available, as well as guidelines for
making technical assessments and selections from among this range are
also given equal importance.
The concept of having to assign a value to human life in order to justify
expenditures on life-saving projects may be distasteful to some railway
safety managers. Yet, this is precisely what is being demanded of them,
as safety projects increasingly fall within the ambit of the capital
expenditure justification processes of the respective railways.
The difficulty with the application of this approach in Asia is that the
values notionally placed on human life have been low in relation to the
costs of life-saving measures. Historically, the failure of some railway
systems in the region to commit expenditures to the elimination of
unofficial level crossings and to the adequate protection of official level
crossings has provided implicit evidence of the generally low valuation of
human life throughout the region.
It is possible through the application of Quantified Risk Analysis to
historical data to establish the probabilities of fatalities and serious
injuries in level crossing accidents, with and without improvement of
level crossing protection. These probabilities will provide an indication of
the life-saving potential of various safety enhancement measures, such
as the installation of full width protective barriers at crossings which
formerly had no protection.
For example, if it is established that there is a probability that six
fatalities per year will occur at a given crossing, currently without any
form of protection, but that this probability will reduce to only one
fatality per year after installation of full width protective barriers, then it
Cost effective system for Railway level crossing protection – Konkan Railway
might be concluded that this initiative has the potential to save 5 lives
per year. In the case of several railway systems of the region, the
lifesaving potential of protective barrier installation at level crossings is
very high.