jt42cwr wrote:Tadman wrote:There's 451 street grade crossings on all of Metrolink. For $19m, you could hire 158 cops. Each cop rotates between 3 crossings per day and writes all kinds of tickets.
So based on those figures, for over 90% of the time there is no cop on duty on any particular crossing, which won't exactly reduce the chances of an accident by a great deal.
I disagree. There is almost no traffic midnight-5am, so we can throw that out. You likely have triple the traffic at rush hour, so we can concentrate on those times. I don't know if police contracts allow for split shifts but if they do, you'd have a nice way to cover two four-hour shifts, one at each rush. Even if there are no stats on car/traffic frequency over crossings, one could look at a timetable and determine the hot times for each crossing. Further, a few crossings could be eliminated -those with dual gates or those along trackage with low speeds or adjacent to stations.
All I'm saying is that you look at this solution and it just reeks of dumb ideas. No other city with cab cars - Chicago, Boston, MNCR, LIRR, Jersey Transit, Philly, DC, Baltimore, Miami, SFO, Sacramento, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Nashville, Orlando, D/FW - has needed this fix. None. Ever. We have a clear problem with the drivers. When we had a drunk driving problem 20 years ago, we didn't install giant safety balloons around cars, we cracked down on drunks. It worked great and it was not exactly easy because drunk drivers don't always swerve. They sit in their cars like sober folks. Crossing scofflaws are very easy to identify just by watching them go around gates.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.