A Pair Of Level Crossings At Vine Road, Barnes
Regular readers of this blog, will know that I don’t like level crossings.
But then, if you’ve lived in East Anglia as much as I have and been inconvenienced, so many times by idiots having accidents or worse at level crossings, you will understand how I feel.
This pair just to the West of Barnes station are two of the most inconvenient for both road and rail, that I’ve seen.
This Google Map shows the area.
A Pair Of Level Crossings At Vine Road, Barnes
Note the two crossings are on Vine Road at the left of the map, with Barnes station at the right.
It took me perhaps ten minutes fifteen minutes to walk from one side of the two railway lines to the other. In that time, the following happened.
- The gates on the Northern tracks through Barnes Bridge station closed once.
- The gates on the Southern tracks through Mortlate station closed three times.
- At least one closure was a long one for a train in each direction.
- A group of teenagers ran across as the gates closed.
On return, I searched the Internet and found this article on the BBC, which is entitled Video captures pedestrians’ ‘extremely dangerous’ dash across level crossing.
This is a typical extract from the article.
Martin, who did not give his surname, said: “It’s ridiculous. I’ve personally sat there for 45 minutes once and it gets worse in rush hours obviously.
“It might be true that they have engineering works, but that’s not the only factor.”
I am surprised that the Health and Safety Executive haven’t ordered Network Rail to close these crossings, which is the only sensible action.
Tunnels or footbridges could be provided for pedestrians and cyclists and vehicle traffic could use other routes.
But of course that would be politically unacceptable to the residents. And probably reduce house prices!
It’s a difficult one, but the alternative of closing the railway would be equally unacceptable to the pver two million passengers every year, who use Barnes station.
The Anonymous Widower 
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I will always alter my route to avoid level crossings when at all possible. I certainly avoid the few which are close to where I live. I actually think that in this day and age, with more traffic on the roads, and more gangs of teens, attempts should be made to get rid of all of them. Close them and if the residents other regular users want to retain a crossing at any particular place, they can go crowd-fund 50% of the costs, with railways or similar paying the other 50%.
Comment by nosnikrapzil | January 2, 2017 |