Do you think all railroad crossings should be replaced with overpasses?

Do you think all railroad crossings should be replaced with overpasses? I think so. There are times when emergency vehicles take longer to get to people because they have to wait for a train.

There are certainly many pros to eliminating grade crossings, but the largest factor inhibiting this plan is the sheer impracticality of building bridges everywhere a road crosses the tracks. I believe major roads should be overpasses, but small local roads should remain at grade crossings.

Think about PTC (positive train control) systems. Railroads have had almost 8 years to begin implementing this, yet the majority haven’t even started though the deadline quickly approaches in 2016 (although pending an extention). Although bridges would be more of a public works project, imagine how hard it would be to implement those when PTC can’t even get off the ground.

Yeah. It would be difficult to replace all railroad crossings. There’s so many of them.

no, it’s not realistic to build a 5 million dollar bridge for 10 cars a day, and that’s the reality of the majority of your railroad crossings. in a city you’d have to buy up all the land around a crossing eliminating dozens of buildings and costing 10’s of millions. and for what gain? 2 minutes of response time when in a major metropolitan there’s probably another fire house on the other side of the tracks, or life flight?

if there was some mandate to replace railroad crossings with overpasses, what you would see is most crossings shut down and you’d have to drive forever to find one of these overpasses.

can’t spend trillions to avoid extremely minor dangers.

I don’t think that should be for a lot of reasons.

It’s not worth the time, money and effort since most crossings don’t get used often. Whether by vehicles or trains. And those few crossings in tight residential areas really don’t need it. Maybe quiet zones are good for it so no trains at night blow their horn and make it hard to sleep but it wouldn’t affect the traffic as easily. Not to mentions it takes more time and money to build an overpass compared to a crossing. And some of these cities don’t have these kind of problems where they’d need overpasses. Usually trains don’t take too long to pass unless it’s long, just departing, is a passenger train stopping at a station (which if the train isn’t moving or another isn’t approaching/is only one track they can take the advantage) and/or it goes into emergency from either a problem on the train or a collision that was vehicle/trespasser related.

Quite a percentage of crossings don’t even experience that long of an activated time. Some operate passenger and maintenance only. So they aren’t as used like some are. There is two crossings in Chicago that are just before Chicago Union Terminal that see hundreds of trains each day. The only time they that crossing remains activated for a long period is if one Metra train is temporarily waiting on a signal. And not a lot of crossings experience heavy traffic. Not to mention it’s nearly impossible to have an underpass or an overpass for those two roads.

Although there are exceptions like extremely wide roads where either there has to be a long gate or cantilever stretching over the road. Or maybe two gates but that would more likely require a median. Either way, that would be better a an overpass as long as it’s not too close to a traffic light.
Note some places like Los Angeles have found solutions already to these problems where they aren’t a concern. By that I’m referring to the Alameda Corridor Trench :http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/alameda/

But for now most placements of railroads crossings are in reasonable enough places where it shouldn’t have to be a concern. Ambulances, Fire Departments and Police vehicles don’t always have to go an active rail line but even they have to be considerate about the railroad crossing signals. Yes they could try to gun it through a crossing but it’s on them. Trains are surely a force not to be reckoned with.

BTW there’s a forum dedicated to railroad crossings alone. They’d never want to hear this kind of a question.
(http://www.rxrsignals.net/Phpbb3/)

I don’t think they should. Although, I think that the railroad crossings should have at least gates. I know quite a few in my city that don’t have gates whatsoever, just the lights.

Read all about this in the Federal Highway Administration handbook.
Railroad-Highway Grade Crossing Handbook - Revised Second Edition August 2007
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/xings/com_roaduser/07010/index.htm

How active are the lines? (BTW which company owns the crossings?)
I see one line that crosses over Bathurst St down to Nelson St. But the rails don’t look to used up to a point where they’d need gates.

NVM it’s Canadian National Rail. Either way I don’t think that line between London and St. Thomas is used as often. Although in the part of London where the CN yard is, it seems absurd to have a crossing right there in the yard. Unless it’s not a heavily used road and probably serves as an entrance for the yard too.

The one I probably cross everyday is the one On Bradley Ave, before highbury. The railroad isn’t too busy, but the road certainly is, even though they just finally repaired that crossing.