Revive the low – cost alternative for railway gates

Saturday, 7 February 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Yet another tragedy has occurred, this time at Batuwatte, again due to an unprotected railway crossing. Readers will recall that a simple, low cost and an effective proposal sent by me appeared in both Sinhala and English press under the above caption in the month of July 2013. Accordingly, if some action was taken to construct speed-breakers (humps) on either side of this particular railway crossing, this tragedy would surely have been prevented. It is sad and unfortunate that the authorities concerned turned a blind eye to public opinion when in fact even some readers have responded to the press endorsing my proposal. Some time ago, the Ministry of Higher Education (obviously to draw the attention of the academia) launched a competition to attract low-cost, effective proposals to solve this railway crossings problem. So far no concrete action seems to have been taken towards this end except for short listing the competitors. The fact that my proposal was not reckoned showed that the Ministry was obviously looking for highly-technical solutions. In this regard it is pertinent to quote a villager from Wanwasala (when another tragedy occurred recently) who said, “No one can rely on that bell. Sometimes when it rains heavily, it rings continuously till someone fixes it. Vehicles with their shutters closed and the radio on wouldn’t hear it on most occasions.” This clearly shows the inherent drawbacks of technical solutions as well as their inability to adequately warn the motorists who sometimes are really negligent, as in the case of Batuwatte. In the circumstances, the best option is not to rely fully on audio or visual warnings but to virtually force the motorists to either stop or slow down. Motorists in Sri Lanka are well used to slowing down or stopping their vehicles on seeing a road-breaker and we have hardly witnessed accidents caused by road-breakers. It is admitted that road-breakers are not feasible at all railway crossings, particularly at those where sharp bends are encountered. I fervently hope that the new Government at least will now take prompt steps to install the proposed low-cost, quick to construct and effective road-breakers also known as ‘sleeping policemen’ at the unprotected railway crossings in order to prevent these unfortunate accidents in the future. Bernard Fernando, Moratuwa