Quote:
Originally Posted by jeremy_haak
Is any degree of automation possible with level crossings with barriers like we'd likely see on Iris or does that qualify as mixed traffic?
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It remains to be seen whether Iris will be a level crossing or a grade-separated one. The early indications were that they wanted grade separation and were investigating such things as building an overpass for Iris, building ped/cyclist overpass only and closing off Iris, etc.
What the current thoughts on the Iris issue are no one knows because they are something like 18 months behind schedule and we haven't had any but the initial public meeting. Indeed, according to the schedule I have Council was supposed to have signed off on the final routing a year ago and it should have received the Fed/Prov EA approvals earlier in the first half of this year. Any kind of hope of tacking on an extension to the Confederation Line during construction (thus avoiding the waste of money that is Tunney's Pasture) is starting to fade.
On the topic of automation and level crossings... that's a whole other can of worms.
Oddly enough I can't actually find any legal reason it cannot be done (which is not to say it can be done - just that finding a prohibition against it is difficult). With respect to railways, the Province just applies Federal jurisdiction. But therein lies the problem: tt really is not at all clear what safety or regulatory regime light rail systems would operate under, or, for that matter, what safety or regulatory regime the TTC's metro system operates under. For example,
there was a fatality in September involving a TTC worker on the subway system and the investigating authorities were not related to Transport Canada or the MTO but rather the police and the Ministry of Labour (and only there because it was deemed a workplace accident). The TTC's streetcars operate under the Highway Traffic Act since they operate in 'highways' (i.e. streets).
However, we already know that the City wishes to "self-regulate" its light rail system. One supposes that in a completely grade-separated system that self-regulation is a viable form of regulation since there is no real opportunity for collisions with other modes and any accidents would be investigated by the police, just as would any other kind of serious accident.
But once you have a system with grade operation that interacts with other forms of transport or individuals crossing the tracks, who gets to regulate it is a whole other question. It would nominally seem to be the Province as a Provincially-regulated railway, though since Ottawa's transit system is federally-regulated it would probably in fact be the feds. It could well be that the City's desire for self-regulation and its apparent predilection for grade-separation is a two-sides-of-the-same-coin or chicken-and-egg sort of thing.
Even right now it's not really clear what regulates the Transitway itself - but it sure isn't the HTA. The Police can't charge OC Transpo drivers for exceeding the speed "limit" on the Transitway, for instance. Where the Transitway crosses a regular road the HTA applies since you're entering a regular road (i.e. it's akin to leaving one's driveway). The City covers a lot of those crossings with traffic signals, but that's comparable to traffic lights controlling accesses to private shopping malls.
Interestingly, the Southwest Transitway in Barrhaven has an at-grade intersection with a private street in the big-box mall just south of Marketplace Station next to the Loblaws (the intersection with Marketplace itself is traffic light-controlled and Marketplace is a public street). Just what laws govern that intersection is an interesting question. Everyone just kind of assumes everyone will implicitly apply the HTA, but strictly speaking it doesn't apply.
So... the question you have to answer first for automation and level crossings is under what jurisdiction a rail transit system having level crossings falls, and then what rules exist concerning automation, if any.
Since you're in Kitchener, perhaps you have some idea as to what regulatory regime is being applied to the Waterloo LRT?
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), you can actually find bits of the liner sticking out of the top of the embankment. This was no doubt done to minimize the likelihood of water draining into the Transitway cutting from the creek.
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