A researcher at the University of Huddersfield has proposed using a network of wireless sensors powered by track vibrations to improve safety at level crossings.
Through funding from the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT), the university’s Institute of Railway Research’s (IRR) Dr Farouk Balouchi has come up with a method of using cheaper, self-powered, wireless sensors to control the opening and closing of level crossing gates.
The sensors would be powered by vibrations in the track caused by oncoming trains – a technique called energy harvesting.
As well as being cheaper to install and run than current detection systems, the sensors would be able to monitor the condition of the track.
The IRR says wireless sensors would also be less disruptive to services to install and would be less vulnerable to theft or damage.
“These detectors are expensive because they are made to be failsafe,” said the IRR’s professor in railway safety, Dr Coen Van Gulijk, describing the typical systems in use today. “But we have shown that we can use many cheap sensors and still guarantee fail safety.”
He added: “If one sensor fails, the others talk to one another and create another network, creating another route for the information to travel.”
The IRR said will now hold discussions with manufacturers to attempt to develop a product for the industry.
Would that make level crossings much safer? Because most of the level crossings have been closed or planned to be closed down to be replaced by bridges and underpasses for traffic and pedestrians to cross from one side to the other side without causing any danger to themselves and to others and delaying train journeys and to reduce fatalities on the railways.
There’s still a significant number of level crossings in operation and not just in the UK.
Where half-barriers are concerned, I am surprised that nobody has thought of installing “One-Way Flow Plates” or similar Traffic Direction Enforcers, in the road surface on either side of the crossings (in the exit lanes). Any vehicles that attempt go around the barriers would be stopped “dead” before they get on to the crossing itself.
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