Invitation
From:
Eric C Wigglesworth - Melbourne, Victoria
Richard A Mather - Salem, Oregon
It is our pleasure
to invite you to participate in the Seventh International Symposium
on Railroad-Highway Grade Crossings which will be held in Melbourne,
Australia at the Clayton campus of Monash University on February
20-21, 2002.
Since, in both our
countries, the majority of crossings are "passive",
we decided to concentrate on this aspect of the overall problem.
The result - 21 papers on this theme - has far exceeded our expectations.
The papers show that
there are three problems. The first is cost. Because of the very
large number of passive crossings, the cost of introducing conventional
active devices based on current expensive track circuitry is prohibitive.
The hunt is on for some less costly system based on newer technology,
and hopefully this symposium will produce some ideas.
The second problem
is the way in which the legal system is perceived to inhibit new
proposals. Current forms of active protection have large safety
margins built into them and many engineers and other administrators
have been reluctant to introduce new, less costly treatments for
fear of legislative attack following any possible failure. For
this reason, the symposium includes a section on "Legal aspects
of innovatory treatments".
The final, and seemingly
most intractable problem is the difficulty of testing innovations
in field studies. Currently, at many passive crossings, traffic
volumes are so low that it is virtually impossible to make adequate
"before and after" evaluations of new treatments in
any reasonable time period. Even if the observation period were
extended over many days, (or recorded electronically) the results
would be unreliable since they would include repeated measurements
of the same group of drivers whose behaviour may not be typical
of the wider driving population. What is needed is a new research
tool. Once again, we think that the papers presented at this meeting
will break fresh ground.
It is our great pleasure
to invite you to participate in this exciting symposium.
Eric Wigglesworth
Richard Mather
