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The town I grew up in, Gisborne New Zealand, had an airport that had a railway line crossing the runway. Perhaps unsurprisingly the trains had to give way to th
by chris_overseas 5y ago
The town I grew up in, Gisborne New Zealand, had an airport that had a railway line crossing the runway. Perhaps unsurprisingly the trains had to give way to the planes.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/gisborne-airport-runway-with-railway.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/gisborne-airport-runwa...
- therein 5y agoI find that surprising rather than unsurprising. After all, a plane can easily do a no-fault turn-around and can observe the train in a collision path from up above while the same cannot be said for a train.
- chris_overseas 5y agoGisborne had a population of about 30,000 at the time with just a handful of flights a day. I'm pretty sure as a pilot I wouldn't want to be looking out for incoming train traffic, especially in difficult weather conditions.
- Someone 5y agoThat may be sometimes/mostly (can pilots really spot a train in bad weather? is the train even visible from the air and not obscured by trees, buildings, in a tunnel?) true for planes landing, but not for planes taking off.
- olyjohn 5y agoIn Seattle, we built the light rail down the middle of a main roadway. The train has to stop for red lights to let cars through. It's so backwards, it's ridiculous. Always fun when the train driver notices it late and slams on the brakes.
- WkndTriathlete 5y agoMinneapolis built their light rail right down the middle of a main roadway, and the train does have to stop for red lights, but there is no train conductor because the train is wired into the stoplight system and slows down/stops/accelerates appropriately. The lights have also been re-timed to allow for the train. Works pretty well in my experience.
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- mark-r 5y agoThey've obviously learned from that experience. The new southwest light rail being built has a ridiculous number of bridges - it's going to rival Chicago's "L" when it opens in two years, at least as it goes through the suburbs.
- iggldiggl 5y ago> but there is no train conductor because the train is wired into the stoplight system and slows down/stops/accelerates appropriately. ??? If you literally mean a conductor, i.e. as per the Wikipedia "a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive" then yes, but then again that's nothing special as local public transport has mostly got rid of conductors for decades already and only a few systems still retain them (like apparently most older North American subway systems). Also it doesn't really have to do anything with how the traffic lights are wired or not. If on the other hand you do in fact mean a driver, then that would very much surprise me, as automatic operation of light rail systems running in mixed street traffic is still very uncommon to non-existant (as compared to fully segregated subways and subway-like systems, where new systems are commonly automated and older systems are slowly and occasionally being converted to automatic operation), and a cursory search seems to indicate that Minneapolis is no different in that regard, i.e. the trains are in fact still driver-operated.
- gumby 5y agoLight rail with no separation down main roads exists in a lot of places (including San Francisco) as the right of way is already available. In Redwood City there's a freight line that runs down the middle of a residential street with zero grade separation or fencing or anything else. You can drive over it if there's no train on it. Unsurprisingly it's a poor neighborhood.
- schoen 5y agoAlso the Amtrak line right down Embarcadero in Oakland that runs right down the middle of the road in the traffic line. I often think of a certain scene in Inception when I see that.
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- gfaure 5y agoWhereabouts in RWC? I checked along the rail route and couldn't find any crossing that wasn't grade-separated.
- MS90 5y agoThat’s interesting, I would’ve been concerned about what happens to the tires when a plane taking off/landing hits those tracks, but I guess it isn’t an issue.
- dilap 5y agoThey look small since they're next to big planes, but plane tires are actually quite big, so I'm not surprised they wouldn't have any trouble w/ the tracks.
- MS90 5y agoI was more thinking about smaller GA planes, but it’s probably a similar situation. They’re designed to slam into the ground with a plane on top of them over and over again, so they’re probably more than strong enough.