Exactly. A gravy train. I'm probably a cynic, (ok, so no 'probably' about it) but I'd put money on it that if the question of cost of CCTV at a crossing was asked last week, before the railways were spread all over every newspaper, the cost would have been significantly lower.
Pete
Here you go, have a look at this from August this year:
Installing CCTV (admitedly not at the level crossing itself) 25grand.
I found loads more, including plenty of local authority websites which give a cost of installing a camera and a pole and lights etc at just over
10k.Pete
"mutley" wrote
The figure of GBP1 million was quaoted by Network Rail on BBC last night. I suspect safety requirements mean their equipment has to be a much higher spec and has to include fail-safe provision.
You know what it's like. A rare tragedy and the entire media descend wanting to know why the job was done on the cheap.
Also I suspect it's rare for local authority CCTV cameras to require cabling running many miles back to a control centre.
John.
John,
It would, however, be interesting to see a breakdown of the £1 million pound estimate if that were ever available. I get a feeling that the date goes in with the price on a lot of cost estimates these days:-)
JIm.
I did add the bit about full barriers not altering the effects of determined suicide attempts, so I appreciate your final point, but I am not well up with the current situation. Are you implying that the installation of full barriers requires the introduction of CCTV? Otherwise, £5 million seems rather a lot just to extend a couple of crossing barriers. Otherwise, as has been said you could employ a ful time gatekeeper for many decades for that amount of money. I listened to a 5 Live phone-in the other morning, and one signalman rang in with the brilliant idea that 'police type speed' cameras be installed at all crossings with automatic fines and the revenue gained for jumping the lights would be far in excess of that required to install the equipment. He operated a light controlled crossing outside his box, and said that on average about 6 cars jump the lights EVERY time he starts the barrier lowering sequence. This would seem to be a problem with society, not with the railways.
I couldn't agree more. The media, instead of giving us all the hype and exageration we'll probably get about lack of safety on the railways should run a series of articles about risk, how it is quantified and how it is controlled. then perhaps Joe Public will come to realise that the billions spent on rail safety is just not cost effective when you take a holistic view of the transport system in this country.
MBQ
What I've found interesting is that this time we mostly /haven't/ had this. The most vocal shroud-waving I've heard has come from a union spokesman, who represents, erm, people in the rail industry!
Some people seem to be mistaking the more clueless opinions on phones-ins and website comment pages for the opinions of the media outlet, not its audience. There also seems to be an automatic "bash the BBC" (and to a lesser extent other organisations) response, which appears as a knee-jerk reaction to whatever is said.
uk.railway, as ever, has a few too many people who can't see the difference between "dog bites man" (not news) and "man bites dog" (news).
It's out there already. Yesterday I got some flyer from my old unversity for a new popular science book on risk. However I suspect most people are more interested in oggling page 3 and reading shock-horror stories to buy it, so the newspapers will give them that instead, and the author will continue to be poorer than Rupert Murdoch.
Those really intent on suicide can be rather clever about bypassing security measures.
Mark Thornton
Arthur Figgis wrote:-
The BBC coverage was disgraceful. I had the misfortune of having to listen to the same attention grabbing headlines over and over again on BBC 24 Hour News. They seemed to be wallowing in the carnage. It occupied 15 mins of every 30 minute bulletin at a time when British troops were sacrificing their lives in a middle east war. Then there were the bedside cameras beside the injured survivors in hospital. When did they last have bedside cameras for the victims of a road accident?
(kim)
You know why they have headlines, yes?
Why should the BBC report the war in Iraq at all? After all, the casualties are lower than in DR Congo's civil war, so maybe they should report on that instead, and ignore Iraq. [1]
Or maybe the BBC knows the difference between "man bites dog" and "dog bites man". Radio 4's coverage of the crash has been pretty reasonable.
[1] Just in case anyone has had a clue-removal operation recently, this is not a genuine proposal, just a silly example to compare with the militant trainspotters' "train crashes aren't news because cars crash more often" wibbling.Arthur Figgis wrote:-
Only one train crashed that night. The way BBC-TV kept repeating the same headline made it sound as if 20 trains had crashed in the same night. There were many equally important stories breaking later on. Since the BBC had nothing new to add to the earlier bulletins it should have been relegated to a second or third slot. It sounded to me as if the BBC were deliberately trying to whip up a state of hysteria among the travelling public.
(kim)
And you think the other TV stations weren't much if any different? The BBC's News 24 covers such events in no more gory detail or over the top repetition than any other news channel. If you don't like the News 24, then try another news channel, like Sky News.
Ian J.
The BBC have had this attitude to disasters for years. Remember the Concorde crash in Paris? The next day the entire 6 o'clock bulletin was fronted by that Welsh newsreader live from the crash site, at the same time as the relatives of the dead were being escorted to the scene to view where their relatives died. Talk about bad taste. The problem is 24 hour dedicated news channels, which dont usually have enough news to fill the time available. When something does happen, they become so 'excited' at having a real story to cover, they go way over the top with speculation, rumour, gossip etc. all presented as news.
A little off topic, but still on level crossings, I was quite surprised when in the UK last year, while driving on a minor road in rural East Yorkshire, to come across a manual level crossing with a sign advising me to blow my horn if I wished to cross the track. Before I could do this, a man appeared from the adjacent farm-cum-crossing-keeper's house, donning a safety vest, and proceeded to raise the barriers by hand. I assume he has reliable information on when trains are due, as this was the ECML, not a dinky branch line. I also assume road traffic is so light (mostly farm-related) that it is cheaper to pay a part-time crossing keeper than to put in automatic barriers.
But if 20 trains crashed on a typical night, chances are it wouldn't get much is any coverage at all; cf road accidents, which kill 8-10 people every day, so /aren't news/.
Many? Which the target audience are interested in?
Because of a secret BBC conspiracy against the rail industry, or because they know that the public likes to know about death and destruction? The only hysteria I heard was a spokesman (theoretically) acting on behalf of railwaymen!
Arthur Figgis wrote:-
Yes, this was BBC 'World News'. The main story of international interest were the events unfolding in Iraq which they barely mentioned. The BBC assumed everyone abroad had an interest or even knowledge of the TOC's recent safety record yet the report on the Queen's state visit to Germany was described as being by "Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth the Second" just in case they confused her with the Queen of Sheba or something.
(kim)
Colin Reeves wrote:-
According to the news report at the time the crossing barrieer didn't even begin to operate until 30 seconds before the train was due to arrive so even if the driver had immediately slammed the brakes full on he couldn't have avoided a collision.
(kim)
The driver wouldn't be looking at the CCTV cameras, the signalman would. If the signalman could see a car on the crossing then the barriers would stay up and the signal for the approaching HST would have been red.
It's interesting that the official report states that the HST stayed upright until it reached the pointwork just past the crossing. Perhaps one tightening of rail safety would be to change any AHB crossings to full crossings where that kind of track layout is repeated countrywide, which probably wouldn't be that many and therefore could possibly be affordable.
Pete
The message from Colin Reeves contains these words:
Somebody has suggested that all road vehicles should be fitted with TPWS... Sounds good to me.
Pete mutley moo cow wrote:-
The TOC's are currently unable to afford to run trains at all in many parts of the country so how much extra they would be willing to spend on safety becomes a moo[t] point. Central is currently running a bus service for pasengers between Coventry and Nuneaton. There is nothing wrong with the track, signalling or crossings as the Freightliner trains are still running on the same stretch of line. I suspect a shortage of rolling stock as Midland Mainline units have been substituting for Central turbostars recently.
(kim)
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