Citation

Vivek AK, Gupta S, Khan T, Mohapatra SS. Transp. Policy 2024; 146: 19-30.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.tranpol.2023.11.002

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It is globally accepted that gates at rail road grade crossings (RRGCs) are more effective at preventing collisions between road users and trains than other types of traffic control devices at crossings, such as flashing lights, bells, and signs. Gates are now standard at RRGCs, especially where trains go fast, visibility is limited, or there is a lot of traffic on both the road and the rails (Ogden, 2007). Gates are designed to stop traffic from entering the track area while a train is passing by. Still, they cannot always prevent collisions, especially when road users fail to obey warning signs or attempt to beat the train by crossing before the gate is fully closed. Gate closures at RRGCs are occurring more frequently and lasting longer due to the current increases in rail and road traffic (Larue et al., 2018). Which in turn generates multiple safety and related problems to road traffic, including congestion, delay, queuing of vehicles, drop in roadway capacity, aggressive behaviour, distractions, and non-compliance with traffic rules (Raub, 2009; Okitsu et al., 2010; Lenne et al., 2013; Khattak, 2014; Beanland et al., 2017; Nguyen-Phuoc et al., 2017; Keramati et al., 2020; Larue et al., 2020a, 2020b, 2020c,b; Pasha et al., 2021; Vivek et al., 2021, 2022, 2023; Vivek & Mohapatra, 2023a, 2023b). While gates may be more effective at preventing collisions, the drawbacks of their frequent and long-term closures need to be addressed. Road users become impatient while waiting at congested level crossings, which can frequently last longer than 10 min (Larue et al., 2018). Road users experience unacceptably long delays due to excessive gate blockage time. As a result, they begin to lose confidence after just 1 min (Khattak, 2014) and become impatient, and eventually violate the RRGC after 3 min (Larue et al., 2020a). Thus, road users’ risky behaviour (violations) reflects their frustration and increases the likelihood of their fatality when they collide with train. In addition to the operational issues already mentioned, several qualitative and geometrical issues implicitly incentivize road users to engage in risky behaviour (Li and Cheng, 2011; Khattak, 2014; Nguyen-Phuoc et al., 2017; Keramati et al., 2020; Pasha et al., 2021, 2022). Some of them include poor crossing surface quality, poor longitudinal and lateral visibility, poor road markings, inadequate night-time lighting, narrow roads, non-uniform scaling of gate-to-gate distance, etc.

Thus, various risk factors, including operational, qualitative, and geometrical parameters, can lead to injuries of varying degrees of seriousness by compelling road users to engage in various risky activities. Evaluating the risk sources and developing mitigation strategies and procedures to reduce those risks to an acceptable level are all part of risk management (Amene, 2017). It is now standard procedure in many nations to assess risk at RRGCs in order to determine where to concentrate investments in risk mitigation (Pajunen, 2012; Amene, 2017). It may be difficult to allocate resources or choose the right countermeasures for RRGCs because of a number of related problems (Pasha et al. (2022). However, the majority of past studies on countermeasures have concentrated on just one goal (lowering the accident rate at RRGCs). By using countermeasures to only address safety-related problems, highway traffic operations may be significantly impacted, which in turn may affect the overall performance of the RRGC. Concerns about safety at RRGCs can be dealt with in a number of ways, such as through traffic signal preemption, warning devices, and grade separation. One of the most common methods for limiting the accident rate at RRGCs is the installation of warning devices such as flashing lights, gates, stop signs, etc. However, such warning devices may be ineffective in mitigating operational issues and other perceived problems at RRGC. For example, automatic gates, which are typically more efficient than stop signs in limiting accidents at RRGCs, add more delays to road users. Such delays have the potential to have an adverse economic impact.

Language: en