Originally Posted by
andr0id
Over the last decade or so, the RRs have been pressured and have gone to great lengths to make grade crossings safer.
Where "safer" means attempting to prevent motorist from being terminally stupid. Somehow it has become the RR's fault that people won't respect the devices that are there to keep you from getting smashed like a bug.
We have a crossing near my house where two gates would block the traffic in each direction. Old style, worked for decades and is well maintained. I've not seen any false alarms or failures at this crossing.
Now there are four gates. They've added a gate blocking oncoming traffic on each side because people would just drive around the gates on the wrong side of the road.
They've also added medians leading up to the RR tracks to prevent crossing to the wrong side in places.
Based on what's happening locally, I think you may have misinterpreted what's going on with those crossing changes and who is paying for them. In my city, we have a series of ten crossings, seven of which go through my neighborhood with three in the next neighborhood over. Some people who live twenty to forty blocks away as well as some developers in the neighborhood with three crossings don't like the train horns. The horns are well over 100 decibels and each crossing gets two long, one short and another long blast of horn. With about thirty to fifty trains per day, the thousand-odd blasts are noticeable. (Oddly, the people in the neighborhood with seven of the crossings aren't bothered by the horns.)
Anyway, if the city is willing to spend the money, the crossings can be upgraded and the train engineers will then not only not be required to blow their horns, they will face a fine if they do so without a hazard on the tracks. Notice the rail road company that owns the tracks does not pay for the crossing improvements. The owner of the roadway that crosses the tracks is required to pay for crossing improvements.
Just for those who are curious, these quiet zones generally involve one of four treatments to each crossing in the zone: closure (cheap, but inconvenient), conversion to one-way with gates that cover the travel lanes, addition of a 100' unmountable median (with no driveways that could allow someone to go the wrong way) or, the most expensive, so-called quad gates. Quad gates are those crossings with two gates on each side so that morons can't go around a gate that is down. They even time their dropping so that people are less likely to get trapped on the tracks, although given the choice of driving through a gate or sitting on the tracks waiting for the train to hit me I know which choice I would make.