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I agree with most of what you have to say there. It feels like most of the “improvements” were “additions”, which is what I am trying to cry foul on. More does not always equal better.
Quickly pulsing may be better than strobe. The point is to draw the attention to the numeric indicator of the hight of the bridge instead of the driver. The driver isn’t the problem, its the hight of the bridge. “you are over height” is omni-directional and needs to be clearly understood by the driver as “Hey, they are talking about me and my truck!”
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If it’s irresponsible for municipalities to have lower height bridges than the current maximum height for truck transport, what are we to do with all of the parkways on Long Island? Those bridges were built a century ago. Adding more, bigger trucks to the traffic mix already on those roads would be an automatic increase in fatal accidents.
The best currently available solution to the 11’8”+8” bridge is to have the drivers pay attention. There is no way to make that happen 100% of the time, all that can be done is increase the amount it does. Saying it’s the city’s fault because the bridge was there is sloppy thinking. Any of those truck drivers could have checked their route for hazards and taken a different one.
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I know @wazroth pointed out that this would damage trucks going where they should be, but the scale of that problem is worth noting. The area sees about 10,000 vehicles a day with about 5-10% (depending on which lanes you’re counting) being trucks. You would be damaging 500 trucks a day for going where they should, to prevent 200 a decade from being damaged from going where they shouldn’t. Every single one of those would easily have an insurance claim, unlike the marked bridge.
As for the pulsing lights, I’ll point you to the MUTCD. This stuff is pretty well documented and your suggestions are out of line with best practices.
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To be fair, there is a bit of Le Chatelier’s Principle going on here: the Railroad’s interest are to protect the bridge and the line, which they have done adequately with the crash bar; the City’s and State’s interests are to protect all parties, but the State is hemmed in by infrastructure and the City is hemmed in by limited power on state roads (and infrastructure). The greatest flexibility is probably in the rail grading, but the Railroad’s interests are already met. It was probably a major win on the part of the City and the State to get 8 inches out of the Railroad (which if I remember right might have included some highway grant monies or something).
In systems terms the way to “really” solve the problem would probably be for it to be more expensive for the railroad to not raise the bridge than to raise it. I think geographically it might be possible to squeeze an additional 2.5 feet out of the 450 feet of line between Duke and Gregson without the grade being too high (though I am not a railroad engineer) – this would get the crossing up to the standard non-highway 14 feet. I can’t imagine how much that would cost, and all of that cost would be borne by the railroad, who are currently not suffering any costs under the present system.
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Okay everybody hear me out: build a giant canopy over the whole intersection, dimming the area. Drivers feel transported into a new world and their attention renews. The signs suddenly become more obvious.
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Exactly. And I would hazard a good guess that this cost would be much more than cumulative insurers’ costs from a large number of damaged trucks, and the occasional repairs of a height bar. So it is hardly likely that anyone might offer to offset any costs the railroad would incur, even if they were willing to entertain the disruption.
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I don’t think you quite understand what you’re saying here. Zero accidents is the default, the expected, the desired result. And in a perfect solution achieving the expected result would require zero signage. Instead you have an intersection and underpass with more bling than a Christmas tree AND about 80 accidents a year. And you propose … more Christmas decorations?
Cool.
I get that the videos are amusing, and that blaming the drivers is the fun approach that requires zero intellectual effort. And if those are the only metrics you care about - which very much appears to be the case - then by all means crack on. But don’'t expect a pat on the back for your brilliant insights.
They created a ring road around the downtown area for … what? Shits and giggles? I expect it was because the local traffic network was causing problems, and resolving that required more than scolding drivers and adding more signage.
So closing the underpass to all vehicular traffic would require additional remediation. No kidding - top insight right there. Simultaneously you have identified that there are several nearby level crossings of the track which also require remediation, because they’re causing death and injury (wait - why aren’t we just blaming those drivers too? Consistency, much?) …
I recall, many years ago, being present when the head of design at a major car manufacturer (no names - won’t embarrass anyone) commented - very much in private - regarding the existence of the UK’s RoSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents), that there might as well be a Royal Society for the Prevention of Weather.
I’m sure he was exaggerating deliberately and knew how provocative this was, but it did make a point, in highlighting an underlying truism. However much some accidents - many, even - may be successfully prevented, we are human and are always subject to them.
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To be fair here, I would start by assuming the generations of people tasked with resolving this are smart and well trained, but constrained by factors outside their control. “No, you can only have $250,000 - do what you can” “No, you can’t shut the road for any period of time” “No, you can’t conduct trials” “No, you cant expand the problem by considering the wider net of roads surrounding this intersection/underpass.” “In my opinion the problem is solely at this intersection/underpass. You are not to look at anything also. Also, I don’t care about the known lost throughput and ripple effects each time this underpass/intersection is closed by another accident.” etc.
Get the railway, city, state, and insurers to pool resources.
Umm… why?
Because individually none of them can do it, but collectively they could.
Why would the railway enter such a venture? As far as they are concerned their interests are adequately addressed.
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Sure, but your target matters. That’s why workplace safety aims for zero accidents, not “a few” or “12 per hundred work hours” or “80 per year”.
What interest does the railway have in reducing the damage to trucks on height bars somewhere near to their bridge?
Ok, you are standing in front of the railroad Board of Directors. Make your pitch. How are you going to win the day?
ETA
What are you? Some sort of commie socialist? /s
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Ring roads generally have very little to do with local circulation. I could go on a long rant about the political and social uses of the American interstate system, but it would take us miles from the topic.
Okay work up a cost estimate for the several miles of road redesign that you think is reasonable and I’ll gladly debate it. I don’t think it is worth the hundreds of millions that could go into other higher impact remediations just because the intersection is photogenic.
Because the remediation to fix the problems are within the range of the damage done. It is both cheaper to fix the level crossings and has a larger effect. Pretending municipal budgets for complete road network redesigns are unlimited is silly.
And when you are starting to fix workplace accidents you don’t dump the companies entire budget into padding all of the floors before making sure the blades have their guards applied. Chasing this bridge as a priority when a sizable portion of the city has higher risk intersection is just chasing the shiny. It is a constant problem in urban planning.
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OK, for funzies let’s sketch this out. I’ve got this here guide for estimating rail costs, dating from 2011. I’ll no doubt use this incorrectly and make some non-engineerly assumptions but it ought to get us closer than an order of magnitude.
We have about 0.1 mile to the east of the bridge where we could adjust the elevation without disrupting the level crossing at Duke St. Let’s assume that to get a good grade we’d have to do a similar adjustment to the west of the bridge, for a total of 0.2 miles of track to regrade. Given the fact that NCRR seems to have ceded its double right of way in this part of town, I’ll assume that the ballast has to be retrofitted to a single right of way to get the required elevation as in 2.2.5, at approximately $1.7 million dollars per mile. But this isn’t a full track construction, it’s more like it’s halfway between construction and rehab. Rehabbing a track costs about $300,000 a mile per 2.4.1 and 2.4.2. Let’s naively average those costs together to get an approximate cost of about $1,000,000 per mile for rehab, or $200,000 for the 0.2 miles we’re talking about.
As for the elevated crossing, I couldn’t tell you whether it’s realistic to retrofit the existing crossing with an additional 2.5 feet of clearance, so we’ll do something similar. A new elevated crossing for a 2-lane highway is about $3.5 million, per 3.2.3. On the other hand, converting an open-deck bridge to a ballast deck costs $5000 per foot (3.2.10), and this bridge looks to be about 100 feet per Google Maps, for $500,000 total. Averaging those costs gives us $2,000,000 for the elevated crossing.
We’ll assume there are no right-of-way costs, new fence costs, or anything of that sort. Soft costs per section 7 amount to about 25%, giving a total cost of $2,200,000 * 1.25 = $2.75 million in 2011 dollars, or about $3.2 million in 2020 dollars.
That’s a lot of money to improve something the railroad doesn’t currently see a problem with. The city and/or state would definitely have to compel that sort of expenditure, which would probably be a tough sell in the courts.
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