Steven can plan

Street safety is also a user issue

December 17, 2009 at 8:32 am by Steven Vance
Filed under Cities, Education, People, Transportation

Street safety is based in part on the right infrastructure design, but also user behavior.

Keep off the tracks. Sometimes a train seems to appear out of nowhere (this seems to be especially true for motorists). I hope Operation Lifesaver is still being taught in schools. I remember someone coming to my school to talk about train safety.

I think trains to many Americans are still a new concept. To best understand what I mean, read the newspaper articles in the two months following any new light rail opening in the United States. There’s a collision every week. Unlike Europe, we ripped out all of our streetcars, light rail, and trams, and we’re still in the beginning stages of returning to rail.

Bicycling and buses: Their large size and unwieldy maneuvering can make it harder to predict movements. Don’t play leapfrog and wait for the bus operator to make the first move (video) – the second move is now yours and safer.

Recognize stop bars, crosswalks, signals. The stop bar isn’t at the bicyclist’s position for a very good reason.

Tags: Bicycling, bus, operation lifesaver, passenger, pedestrian, photo essay, photos, rail, roadway, safety, street, train, user

-Steven Vance

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Jennifer

Hmm, I think I understand now why people are still wailing about CN. It's a different issue, I know, but it's the first one that came to my mind when I read "I think trains to many Americans are still a new concept." I think the same goes for freight traffic---suddenly every day they have to stop and wait for a train to pass, and they get incensed at the delay of "traffic."

Far as I can see, that's not really a safety issue (weren't you prepared for the fact that your house would be farther from an ER when you moved out to the middle of nowhere to get away from higher taxes to fund a more extensive county health system? oh, the irony...), except to the extent that people always try to play chicken with trains. Maybe Operation Lifesaver should be expanded somehow to better target adults, since they're the ones driving.

Steven Vance

Those traffic delays would probably happen eventually, regardless of the train's presence. But it's these delays that somehow prompt people to make very rash decisions. Flashing lights, ringing bells are no match for a person's frontal lobes. I agree, Operation Lifesaver should expand. Getting and renewing a driver's license is too easy. Although, I believe because of the Chicago Tribune's multi-year effort to expose the dangers of teenager and driving, it takes a little more time and practice for a teenager to receive a driver's license. (I think I just opened a new discussion.)

The CREATE project is a real opportunity to mitigate freight railroad interference, increase safety, and improve motorist and passenger train travel times.