A simple set of yellow flashing lights along the curved roadway where an OC Transpo bus slammed into a VIA train last week could have prevented the deadly crash, a rail safety expert says.
“It would have been one more protective measure,” David Jeanes, president of Transport Action Canada – a public transit lobby group – said this week.
Jeanes said cities in Ontario are in the habit of putting up sets of advance yellow signals before traffic lights hidden by hills or bends.
In fact, Jeanes said there’s already an advance yellow warning light before the rail crossing on March Road in Kanata.
“It’s possible that they should be doing that also for the Transitway at Fallowfield Station,” he said.
He said that when buses leave the station to head north, they face a curved road lined by trees and shrubs, hiding the train crossing.
“Even before the curve stops, you’re already at the railway tracks,” he said.
Officials from the Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said the gates and red lights at the site of Wednesday’s collision, which killed six people, had been activated for 45 seconds before bus number 76 barrelled through them.
Jeanes said 45 seconds would have allowed plenty of time to turn on an advance yellow light and for the bus driver to stop.
Regardless of what TSB finds in its final report, Jeanes said installing flashing yellow lights before the crossing near Fallowfield Station “might be common sense just to do anyway.”
Jeanes explained that red stop signs are also absent from Ottawa railway crossings because road signage is regulated by Ontario’s driving laws.
He said the Highway Traffic Act doesn’t mention rail signage.
Train crossings – and the signs around them – are regulated by rail companies and Transport Canada.
And shoving a stop sign into the ground at the six road-level train crossings in Barrhaven alone might just create more headaches, Jeanes said.
“There may be an hour with no trains, and if every vehicle has to come to a full stop, then the capacity of your road is significantly reduced,” he said.
The gap between federal and provincial laws also means that it’s up to each city in Ontario to decide whether it wants its buses to stop, like school buses, at all railway crossings.
For example, the Toronto Transit Commission has a policy that forces bus drivers to make a complete stop at all grade-level train crossings, regardless of whether the barriers are down.
A spokesperson for the Railway Association of Canada – a lobby group that speaks for rail operators across the country – said that because the feds are reviewing the rules that govern road-rail crossings, he was unable to comment on safety measures.
However, the group said in a press release following Wednesday’s crash that “railways encourage amalgamations and closures of unnecessary crossings, high safety standards for the others, and strictly limiting new crossings to locations where no alternatives exist.”
One option is to get rid of grade-level crossings altogether by digging out underpasses for traffic. But according to Jeanes, “we don’t have the money for that” in Ottawa.
Plans to redesign the crossing near Fallowfield Station got the axe in 2004 when crews discovered that the soil in the area contains flowing water.
“It could have put houses in Barrhaven at risk of damage to their basements,” Jeanes said.
Mayor Jim Watson said councillors will be talking about what can be done to improve rail crossing safety at next week’s council meeting.
“If there are things that our staff believe we can do in the interim before we even get an interim report from the TSB, then that’s what we’ll ask them to bring forward on Oct. 2.”
The final results of the TSB investigation could take up to a year to finish, but Watson said he’s met with board executives who told him they won’t wait that long to suggest urgent changes to the city’s rail crossings. “And that was comforting,” Watson said.