Great Western Coffee Shop

I was looking for a contrived way of introducing the topic of "where I am now?" - well, really looking for an uncontrived one, but they are so much harder to contrive. When I saw the state of this track, it suggested a reference to the earlier discussion about BR's resort to spot re-sleepering in the 1980s, triggered by the "Beeching Night" TV  programme sequence. I know this line has had a lot recent emergency engineering work, including spot re-sleepering.

My initial reaction was that the only thing holding these rails together is the woodworms holding hands very tightly (there are worse bits than the picture). However, there must be more wood in them thar sleepers than meets the eye, since on last Wednesday morning here was a track maintenance crew replacing the bolts (I guess with longer ones) using the cutest little petrol-engined bolt driver. You can see their zinc-bright heads in the further of the two tracks, actually a set of points, in the picture.

I have ulterior motives for wanting to introducing the subject, but as I know there are some forum members who like doing things the difficult way, would you like to guess (or, for the best-informed, deduce) where this picture was taken? Obviously not in National Rail territory. As I expect - indeed I hope - that non-one will get the exact place on only that, I will add more clues over a couple of days.

The approach to Kingswear?

I would be surprised to find bolted track on any formerly British Rails lines, especially as they look very well used.  I've also noted clean ballast, lack of plant life on the tracks, stone wall in the background, and electrical gubbins attached to the rails and that puts me off UK industrial heritage, so I think we're outside the UK.  In Europe, some countries have excellent track where it's intensly used ... other not quite so much and starting from nearest I would make wild guesses that you're in France, or Poland ... looking further, towards eastern Europe, the Balkans or outside Europe?   It could be the busy railroad tracks in a subcontinent or Asian city, or a heavy freight line in the USA for example ... the choice then becomes very wide indeed.

I ought, strictly, to have said "not in Network Rail territory", though it amounts to the same thing. The continuity links and insulating joints puzzle me (i.e. where they occur does); but this line has been resignalled in the last five years using oodles of axle counters, so the track circuits may no longer be operative. Note: not a yellow mushroom in sight!

Here's a comparison.

This line never quite closed, but it was reduced (at about Beeching-time) to a couple of trains a day only in summer. Then it was re-fully opened 30 years ago, which even involved building a new chord to avoid a reversal. However, the rest of the line had little spent on it.

Passenger numbers have built up, partly holiday traffic but also commuters to the nearest city (where all the trains from here go). But the age of the track - some is apparently pre-1900 - has become more and more evident. The bit at the city end (shared with another, reopened, line) has been renewed, and the whole line resignalled. But that led to a sharp drop in performance (the wrong kind of axle-counters on the line...) and now finally the rail infrastructure operator says the rest of the work will begin next year. Relaying most of that 61 km of single track, renovating six bridges, and re-installing the signalling (I guess the saving due to the previous work is not huge) is costed at about ^90M (at current exchange rates).

(I will look into providing a link from where this comparison makes sense - when I find out how to do that.)

The slepers seem a bit longer than normal. Are we talking about Ireland?

No - wrong direction, though looking out of the train window now it looks damp and green enough. As Graham guessed it is in Europe.

Later in the journey I will be passing the local airport - round the back, with no stop there. While it would make sense to serve it by train, politics forbids that as the local councils are trying (against fierce opposition) to build a new one.

Having got to the city at the other end of the line, I was looking at a new tram line being built (first power applied to the overhead wires last week). It runs alongside an existing tram line, and shares a station with it. The two lines are quite separate, and where the two cross on the level there is no track connection (just a short bit of shared 750V wire, isolated from both). Then the new line sets into the countryside.

If that's not enough clues for someone to recognise at least the city, I shall have to tell you which country this is.

Are you in Prague? I know they are rebuilding a new tram line next to the old.

I thought Prague, too.

No, not Prague. Not even particularly close, given that it is in Europe.
I think I'll have to give you a picture of the station, if only because it is traditional.
That will have to wait until I get back to the flat in about an hour - the link I have now is about as slow as the train. 60 km/hr does feel  painful, like the train is struggling not to go faster

Not sure I'd want to go any faster on track like that...

It's not somewhere in Spain is it? Maybe one of the more local branches?

Hmmm .. I thought the gauge looks a little wider than the 4'8.5" so that could be a good guess.  And perhaps the political comments take us to Basque country?  So the airport would be Bilbao, San Sebastian, Vitoria or perhaps Pamplona.

Well, I guess technically that is closer - but the humidor key rests untroubled in my pocket. Here is the promised picture of the station, which ought to be much more diagnostic.

It's a bit late due to the inability of a certain mobile telecomms operator to connect me to the net. "Oh I think there have been a few problems there" says girl in shop the other end of town, airily.

Zaragoza? Just re-read your post and remembered seeing that Zaragoza has had a new tramline powered up in June.

Still the wrong country. I  thought there was a big clue in that yellow sign (OK, it is only small in the picture).

Ahh now you point it out, that looks like a French Post sign.

OK I'll accept that as "France", though in fact it's the sign telling you not to do silly things with trains. That means I can name Orange F as the guilty provider that's had me chasing all over town trying to find a place I can get internet access. I have had no end of trouble explaining that I have almost no access just in the part of town I am staying, even with a god 3g+ etc. link, but no trouble elsewhere. Can I report a potential network fault? No. Several telephone numbers that do not work unless you have an Orange phone (fixed or mobile), staff who can't help and can't say who can, etc. I must look up the French for jobsworth. Grrr.

Still no call for that key, just yet.

Employ^ tatillon

The steepness of the pitch of the roof suggests somewhere that gets a fair bit of snow. Switzerland would never have such untidy rail. Holland?

Read the post you've quoted, we've determined it is somewhere in France, with a new tram line, although that doesn't narrow it down as France is going tram mad recently and fitting them everywhere. I'm thinking somewhere in the south, possible Cotes D'Azur

I was thinking of something much ruder. But maybe they are so common in France that a special word is not so useful. At least, a lot of the French think that's how they are seen.

Yes, I did mean I am in France. The facts I gave are rather carefully worded; not just "a tram line"...

I usually say that the French provide very good counterexamples for us, since if it is at all possible to find two different ways of doing something, us and the French will do so. The classic example being: you think secondary school years should be number 1 to 6, then get complicated? Not in France where they go 6 to 1 and then terminale. Really though, other nations may do the same, they just don't make such a helpful choice of language to tell us about themselves.

I can see I shall have to prepare the items that I though worth putting beside our own domestic ones, off-line if need be, so as to best use any limited access time I have.

I have seen one reference to "le jobsworth", but as "job" and "worth" are nothing like their French equivalents, I can't see it would be widely understood. I was put off from the answer by the key to the humidor being still unavailable. Not that it would matter to me, having parted company from tobacco on 12 May 1991. But I'll play along for fun, and have a punt at Nice this time, where I once got very drunk.

At the risk of starting a grande diversion ... there is a tendency in many nations for individuals to be rather less helpful than they could be for tourists / visitors ... perhaps that's something that caught you?   Not just french - you'll see it in Bath too.

But of course never in North Wales... :)

I don't know if it is possible to arrest this digression in its tracks, but I was really alluding more to the French view of themselves - which is of course what determines whether they have a word for something/someone. I've generally found the French very helpful outside big cities, but the idea that "we don't do American-style customer service with a smile" is I think current in a Parisian elite who travel enough to make comparisons and are willing to be self-critical. City size is more important than nationality, but as a wild generalisation I would say that judgements of people(s) about themselves relative to others are never anything like the objective truth as viewed by a Martian.

No, nowhere near Nice - I would have had better weather there, but been paying a lot more.

Allinges, and what it means for level crossing safety

This is the first (or the second, if you count the cost a track relaying posted earlier) parallel from France.

Last week the verdicts were announced following the trial resulting from the accident at Allinges in 2008. That was one of a sequence of level crossing accidents, some particularly scary - like the heavy lorry that derailed a train which demolished some buildings by the line.

Allinges was the one that grabbed the attention, especially of politicians, since it involved a school bus. Seven children were killed, three seriously injured, and many others (and their families) suffered in other ways. It was of course immediately followed by an official report and a plan to improve safety.

The verdict found the bus driver criminally responsible, which was  not a surprise and accepted by him. It awarded compensation for some 250 claimants (all family members counted individually) against SNCF and RFF*, who are appealing.

This was an AHBC, with a total of 13 seconds from first warning to train arrival.  The driver stopped on the crossing, and cannot now explain why. The road curved, and the track was canted, so that a bus had to cross very slowly - first gear, wait for any oncoming traffic, etc. The road was scored by buses and other vehicles grounding on it. The driver says this bus was always short of power (other drivers of it disagreed), and would not pull off the crossing. The investigators suspect he panicked and put it in the wrong gear (it had a manual gearbox).

However, since that report the actual rate of closure and reconfiguration has been modest: 100 a year are being closed, out of a total of 15,000. RFF's annual budget (^50M) is roughly the same as NR's (^30M, I think), though this may still be much more than it was before, and getting contributions from other public sources may add a lot to that. RFF does have the same stance of "no new level crossings", but this is not being applied to reopened lines (at least not tram-train reopenings).

Looking at the points that are seen as important in France, some things caught my attention.

• I have not seen any mention of a formal risk assessment procedure like NR's using ALCRM.
• NR/ORR/RAIB identify this kind of crossing configuration issue as an important one, and if a bus cannot cross with enough momentum to get it clear this would rate high in risk scoring. This has not registered in France, even after Allinges.
• The fact that a driver might not see the flashing light immediately has been noted. But that's why our wig-wags have two lights: so there is always one lit. French ones have just one light (is it a wig or a wag?), and no amber introducing light, but no idea of changing that. What has been proposed is replacing all of them by standard three-aspect traffic lights. The argument goes that these are more familiar, evoking habitual responses even in those who rarely see a level crossing, do not flash, and have an amber phase. The advantage of  this is that with only a red light, drivers must sometimes have to cross when it is lit, and that weakens the "never cross..." conditioning. I have found that too: I saw the lights flashing (and heard the bell) as I crossed - did I miss them earlier?  Can't tell. I would add that our amber introducing light is meant to be lit for 3 seconds - my impression is that it is often a lot shorter (but I may be mistaken).

Lastly, I have tried to prod Wokingham BC about their lack of a plan for replacing our station level crossing elsewhere. The standard excuse is that there is no funding, so no point in planning how and where to make new grade-separated crossing. My point is that political priorities could change that quite quickly, for example after a bad accident at such a crossing. Planning, in the local councils' sense, a new crossing would take years. But planning, as most of us use the word, also means thinking ahead to avoid being caught out by events. I'm not sure if what has followed Allinges supports my point or not.

[*RFF=R^seau Ferr^ de France - the infrastructure operator.]

RFF and SNCF to be re-merged

Since I was talking about RFF ... RFF was split from SNCF in 1997, at the European Commission's insistence. The logic is to enable fair competition between operators, approximating a single market for track access.

This is of course not the French way at all, and the unions opposed it at the time, but it did go through. There was quite a bit of miffity of the part of the French when they found that the Germans had done rather less than they had, agreeing with the EC a structure where both infrastructure and operators are within DB but with a Germano-Chinese wall between them.

It is now proposed to reintegrate RFF within SNCF, along the German model, going as far as the EC can be persuaded to swallow. Everyone seems to agree that the working relationship between the two is so bad something has to be done.

So it looks a bit odd that there was a well-supported strike at SNCF against this proposal. Is this just unions being anti for its own sake (e.g. like French teachers opposing the stopping of Saturday morning classes, and now opposing their reintroduction)? Not quite. RFF only has about 1500 staff, so all actual work is contracted out and I think most of it goes to SNCF. SNCF also manage the infrastructure for RFF on a day-to-day basis, for reasons of safety. The proposal is to transfer all those infrastructure workers (about 50,000) to the new RFF-inside-SNCF. That change evokes suspicion, both generally and (shock, horror!) that they might lose some of the special conditions of working for SNCF.

I've been looking for figures on RFF's income stream, but have not found any to set beside NR's access charges. RFF say they charge in three ways: once for having access to a route, once for reserving a specific path, and once for running a train. On aggregate these give them about the same income. I even found a web page for applying for track access, which looks decidedly ultra-liberal - though it did say the first step would always be technical feasibility studies.

Well, I am surprised my clues are unsolved - Google knows the answers. However, one last clue has presented itself. On the way through the aforementioned city, by car this time, Garmin took me past this. It is disused (actually the HQ of a load of unions) but was in a sense the city end of the line, in that trains would arrive here and then reverse to what is still the main station. 100 years ago the lines in and out of this station ran through the streets, and the main line out to the West did so too - there were over 30 level crossings in the city centre. Next to this station, some of those rail/roads are now being converted for yet another new non-guided (but partly on reserved roads) bus service.

That's the 'Maison des syndicats' (union offices) in Nantes, formerly the Gare de Nantes-Etat.

And after much searching of Google Earth I think I can say with some confidence that the first and second pictures are of Gare de Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie on the Atlantic coast.

http://goo.gl/maps/kfipu

Jeez, that was a tough find.  :P ;) ;D

Indeed: I, too, spent a lot of time searching, but eventually gave up - rather sooner than bignosemac did, apparently.  :-[

Yes, well done. I shall open the (virtual) humidor and offer you an equally virtual and entirely smoke-free cigar. But not, please, an e-cigar.

Sure, St Gilles is a bit obscure, but I thought the clues for Nantes would be easy enough.

Put "airport france protest" into Google and it comes back with Notre-Dame-des-Landes straight off. The "A^roport du Grand Ouest" (a grandiose way of saying it's meant to serve Rennes too) is a replacement for Nantes-Altantique, on the grounds that it has reached its capacity. I've always found it virtually deserted.

Then there were the heavy hints about the tram-train. There is already one line, to Clisson (about 25 km). That's what passes for the main line to Bordeaux, so the tram-trains replace local trains, and have to use the same platform heights as the longer-distance trains. The end of one platform at Nantes has, however been lowered. But what stands out is that the ability of a tram-train to run on the street is not being exploited here.

The new line reopens a longer railway line (about 60 km) to Ch^teaubriant, closed in 1980. The rest of the line onward to Rennes is still open, but apparently the rebuilt line will not connect to it. The tram-train runs out through Nantes on one of two remaining railway tracks, beside an existing Nantes tram line built on two more previous tracks. As I said, they cross it but do not connect (see picture of crossing at their shared station - the track with the barrier across it is for tram-trains, the others for trams). This seems to me to rather remove the point of tram-trains, though on this line it does at least run on roads for a short distance. 

The service planned is rather limited - 7 per day full length, then 16 and 23 per day for shorter stretches from Nantes (27 and 15 km). I have not yet found how long the full 60 km will take - but note that the train-trains from Rennes (about 54 km) take well over an hour. Mind you, the fastest trains between Nantes and Rennes (100 km for an indolent crow) take 74 minutes. You can see why there is a plan to build a new line via the new airport linking Nantes to Rennes. Eventually.

So one of the parallels to look at is line re-openings. In the French case these were often closed a lot more recently, and the track was very rarely lifted. That ought to make it a lot easier to reopen them. RFF's interactive network map still shows these disused lines, which suggests that they are regarded as lines that just happen to have no trains and consequently are not maintained.

This whole ... business was triggered by Red Squirrel's observation that, in a short list of notably green-leaning cities, Nantes is closest in size to Bristol. It has a lot of geographical similarities too, and (partly as a result) historical ones - including the unfortunate one of a similar involvement (half a million souls) in the slave trade. As I was going to be here, I thought I would look for parallels and comparisons. Is Nantes and its region a transport nirvana, in any way, or is it just the grass (that some tram lines run through) being greener?

I hope no-one thinks I have been wasting their time unduly - bearing in mind that anyone who takes on one of these challenges must want to waste some of their time. I shall add a few more parallels I have found - so it should be informative at least.

I was only in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie last July, albeit briefly whilst we were staying in the area. We were camping, and had a few nights in St Jean De Monts, and a few nights in La Tranche sur mer, due to lack of availability for our entire trip at one of the camp sites.

Level crossing alarm signal?

My flat overlooked the railway on its way out of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie station, between two level crossings (both out of view). The first is at a little-used entrance to the port, just at the end of the platform, the other is a bigger road junction and is just after the line reduces to one track and leaves the station completely. Usually I would hear the warning bell, which stops when the barriers are down.

Last Saturday, as the 8:15 train was leaving, the bell continued intermittently (on/off about 3 seconds each) and the train stopped just past the last signal (in picture 1). I went down and could see the barriers down at the first crossing but up at the other (picture 2). After a minute or so the driver walked through the train and it went back to the station. Then a staff member who was waiting on the wall jumped down to reset some switches and locked them before walking back. (For most trains he cycles along the platform and walks up the track to change the points with local levers.)

About 15 minutes later the train left normally. So was that a level crossing malfunction? Or possibly an operating error? And is there any similar audible malfunction warning in this country?

Traffic lights for level crossings?

The level crossing at the exit from Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie station is inside a junction with traffic lights (picture 1). Note that these are standard red-amber-green lights. I asked some time ago on this forum if anyone know of one of these in Britain, and got no response.

I already knew of this one in France, but having looked closer they are quite common. For example, just up the line (in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez) there are two at crossroads where there is a road right next to the railway. The crossing within Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie station looks like another one, but is not ^ the lights are for a pedestrian crossing, and there are none for traffic onto the crossing from the port (hard to see in picture 2). (You can also see a rather vicious set of trap points.)

I have also found traffic lights at a simple LC ^ no side roads - in Rennes, on the very minor line to Ch^teaubriant and on a main road out of Rennes (picture 3). I suspect the specific reason here is that traffic tails back from the junction with the rocade. These lights are red, amber, flashing amber but never green (common in France). If you look closely, you can see the rather amateurish sign encouraging drivers not to queue nose to tail over the crossing. (Do the French have yellow box junctions? I don^t think so.)

I found a case for doing this in an official report, and quoted it earlier:

So:
^   Do you think this would help?
^   With our three-light wig-wags, does it help much less?
^   Commenting on the plan for traffic lights at the Wokingham station LC, I suggested that drivers might blindly obey a green light even when traffic was queuing across the LC. Do you agree?
^   Is a yellow box a better answer anyway?

You cannot judge the vast majority of the morons on our roads by the actions of the few sensible drivers. Traffic lights are seen by too many people as an advisory, capable of being ignored in many circumstances. I was once taught the safe way of interpreting a red light as a "Give Way" sign by two former members of the regional crime squad. As a civil servant, I have had few better perks, but never use it these days.

At least a level crossing barrier offers a tactile clue, in the form of a bump if you hit it.

I was taught that a green traffic light is an invitation to proceed if safe to do so.  Personally, I would find an invitation to proceed onto a level crossing which has no exit from it a reason to allow the driver behind to sound his/her horn impatiently rather than go across.  However, the driver who has been less cautious is probably not in a position to send a post to the forum to contradict.

I was going to say no-one is thinking of doing away with barriers ^ but then there^s tram^trains. Trams, of course, have crossings without barriers, often inside traffic-light junctions.

The line from Nantes to Ch^teaubriant has 24 ^normal^ level crossings (half barrier except at stations where full barriers are preferred) and one pedestrian crossing out of town, but in town there are five tram-style crossings without barriers. These are all (I think) where the tram-train and tram lines run side by side.

The tram-train reuses on of two remaining railway lines, the other being a freight line to Carquefou (continuing as non exploit^e to Cand^). Previously there were barriers around the two rail lines, leaving the tram lines outside (though the line being reused had been taken up at road crossings). I did not check what they are doing with the barriers from now ^ I think they are still to be fitted. However, I think there will now be barriers around the freight line, leaving the three tram and tram-train lines right next to it outside.

If you think that is odd, it is nevertheless the same thing as happens (for example) in Nottigham. At the Basford crossing (worth visiting by Street View, if you are interested) there are two tram lines outside, and two rail lines inside, the barriers, and traffic lights around the whole thing. And finally, if that sounds odd or confusing, until the trams arrived the crossing was controlled by a local signaller, but had no barriers or wig-wags ^ just traffic lights.

Tunnel Safety

The apocalyptic scenes at the accident in Quebec have parallels in one of the documents I found about Nantes. Some kind of long-term transport planning group of the agglomeration de Nantes produced a document of their ideas individually and as groups. It^s long and I have only skimmed through it, but I did find one study that severely criticised the safety of the tunnel at Chantenay. This was the second half of the process of burying the line through the city, and was started in the 1930s but not finished until the 1950s.

The criticism compares safety standards and installations with modern tunnels such as the (rebuilt) Mont Blanc or the general Swiss requirements for safety. It finds Chantenay well below par, and carrying significant levels of oil refinery traffic. The scenarios include a fire in such a train as a passenger trian is passing it ^ including such phenomena as BLEVE and UVCE*.

I wonder if there are rail tunnels in Britain that should give us similar concerns.

(*BLEVE = boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion
UVCE = unconfined vapour cloud explosion
Both, oddly, better known in French than English language contexts)

There is the potential for a fire in any rail tunnel, regardless of design or age. And if such a fire should involve an oil/petroleum train and passing passenger train the results are not going to be pretty, even with the best safety systems.

Number one priority is ensuring the tanker wagons are well maintained. The Summit Tunnel Fire (http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=207) (.pdf of the official accident report from Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate) is a case in point.

Mont Blanc has influenced safety design, but of course it was a road tunnel. The Channel Tunnel would have been a better example of the particular needs of rail tunnels, though at the top end of cost and difficulty.

This French study talks about how the Swiss would be up in arms about one of their rail tunnels in such a condition, and would demand such measures, "relatively simple to put in place", as:

• Level floor for emergency road vehicles to drive on
• a dry "riser" (whatever that's called when horizontal)
• sprinkler able keep trains cool for hours, including on approaches in cuttings
• safe drainage for water and fuel
• accesses to evacuate passengers

Access should generally be easier than under the channel, even if it does still mean new tunnels.

I think I have come across this meaning of "simple" in other more or less amateur transport proposals.

Yesterday the new tram-train line between Nantes and Ch^teaubriant was opened by Jean-Marc Ayrault (not only French prime minister but mayor of Nantes before that). That reminds me that I was going to comment on a few things I found/photographed/saw last year around Nantes, but never got round to it. I did mention the tram-train already in a post last summer (reply #31 above) with one picture, but only briefly.

If you just stop and think about trams, trains, and the best way to use them - and then about how to use the hybrid tram-train - you may come up with something like this:

• an old railway line can be rebuilt for trains if complete, and it's not obvious that track will necessarily be a lot cheaper for tram-trains/light rail
• that's partly because current wisdom is that out of town you should use 25 kV not 750 V, hence plain trams are not favoured
• if there are gaps, a tram-train can get round them by road
• if this is in town it adds to the usefulness of the service, elsewhere it doesn't really
• using a railway station calls for a lowered platform (even in France), though this is not always done on Nantes's other tram-train line to Clisson
• the real benefit of the tram-train is where it has to share with rail traffic out of town, and use street tracks as well for part of its route
  

So why, in that case do we find:

• neither of these routes ever uses the city tram tracks (both terminate in the main station at Nantes)
• the Clisson route does share a standard railway line with other trains
• the new Ch^teaubriant line runs beside the tram line in its off-street section (an old railway line), but never connects with it at all. It has a crossing, where it shares a 750 V supply, but separate track (see  Reply #31 above) .
  
• at Ch^teaubriant the tram-trains use the station where the railway line from Rennes terminates, but the two do not join (picture 1)
  

Is this a case of the worst of both worlds?

The other pictures show the depot, where the unelectrified freight line to Carquefou is crossed by the 750 V access to the depot (picture 2) and the grand (grandiose?) new station at Haluch^re, with two lines each for the trams and tram-trains to avoid them getting too friendly.

There's a report of the opening here (http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/light-rail/nantes-opens-its-second-tram-train-line.html).

Having commented previously (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=12589.msg135332#msg135332) on the level crossing accident at Allinges in 2008, I can now report that a bridge has been built to replace it (PN 68) and a nearby accommodation crossing (PN 67). The fact that there was an accident there, and the death of seven children in a school bus is so very motivating for politicians, does make you wonder whether this was the only option. There is a press release (http://www.sncf-reseau.fr/sites/default/files/upload/_Mediatheque/presse/CP%20Allinges%201er%20d%C3%A9cembre%202015%20011215.pdf) - and another (http://www.sncf-reseau.fr/fr/suppression-de-deux-passages-a-niveau-a-allinges-haute-savoie) - from SNCF R^seau.

The road (serving also as a village bypass) and bridge cost 18M euros, as part of the programme of level crossing safety triggered by the accident. They list these aspects of that programme:

• Create no new level crossings
• Close little used LCs
• Improve LCs or replace them with bridges
• 63 LCs closed in 2014, including 8 on the national priority list
• Develop prevention measures: reminding drivers of the rules and providing a GPS map of LCs
• Install radars to detect speeding and jumping the lights
• Conduct studies and experiments into new safety measures: brighter LED lights, object detectors, better barriers to keep pedestrians out, etc.
• Object detecting radars are already under test
• Experiments are underway with marking barriers to show they are designed to break if hit
• Experiments are underway with painting stop lines on the road! (I have never understood why these are so rare at traffic lights in France)

Once again, it's mostly familiar but with a couple of points that look odd.

You mentioned trams and a crossing with trains and tram-trains side by side earlier. As trams in many/most places run on streets like buses, stopping for traffic lights and Give Way signs and so on, wouldn't barriers in such a situation be more for the convenience of the tram (allowing it to take priority) than safety?

There's no connection - the latest post is entirely about railway level crossings, and the programme that followed the Allinges accident. I have no idea what they are thinking of as gates that can exclude pedestrians, nor whether is would ever work. The tram-trains are the width of France away and ... a bit confusing.

Where the Chateaubriant tram-trains run out of town and off-road, they still have railway level crossings. In Nantes they also mostly run on one of a pair of railway tracks, the other being a very rarely-used factory access. What were a further two tracks on the same formation were made into tram tracks some time ago. Before the tram-train works there were a railway level crossing and a tram crossing side by side (as in Basford, though that has road traffic lights too). Now, all four lines are a tram crossing - and one of those is a railway track. I think this is confusing either way - but I guess the speed limit of the railway should determine which type of crossing is needed.