Fears for blind pedestrians at rail crossings

Cathy Turner stands on the yellow pad meant to warn blind pedestrians to stand back. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Yellow tactile strips meant to keep blind people off an Auckland railway track have been realigned after a safety campaigner watched a train pass over them.

Cathy Turner, whose 15-year-old son Michael was killed by a train while walking to school in Hutt Valley in 2003, believes the strips are still too close to rail traffic through a pedestrian crossing at the new $2 million Glen Innes "signature" station.

But the Foundation of the Blind said they were meant to tell people where not to stand, not where it is safe to do so.

Mrs Turner, in Auckland to see improvements promised by the Railways Corporation, was alarmed to watch the sides of a train pass over strips at the busy crossing.

The strips have since been moved back, but not nearly as far as she would like.

She complained weeks ago to the corporation, which owns railway tracks, that the strips were on the wrong side of painted white limit lines behind which all pedestrians must stand when trains are coming. They were just 600mm from the track- less than the overhang of some trains.

The corporation emailed her last month to say it understood the strips had been moved, but Mrs Turner found otherwise.

Less than a fortnight ago contractors to Auckland Regional Transport Network, which develops and manages railway stations, moved the strips to behind the limit lines. But even now, they are within 2m of the centre of the track, against a recommended 3m, or a minimum of 2.5m where space is scarce.

Mrs Turner was relieved they had been moved, but disappointed the contractors "still haven't got it right".

The strips on the other side of the crossing remain on the wrong side of the limit lines, but are 2.2m from the track centre.

There is more space in front of similar strips at Papatoetoe and Ranui, two other stations developed as prototypes for station upgrades, but they are also on the wrong side of the limit lines.

Network spokesman Bob Lupton said the strips were installed before an industry standard stipulated they should be behind the lines.

He said they were installed in consultation with the Foundation of the Blind, which inspected the Glen Innes station before it opened last year.

Limit lines would be repainted in front of other strips now that the standard was clear, but space constraints meant some would be closer than 3m from track centres.

Mr Lupton said his agency was keen when rebuilding stations to replace crossings with bridges wherever funding allowed, but where this could not be done it always installed loud bells and bright lights, as at Glen Innes.

Foundation spokesman Chris Orr, who is blind, said his organisation successfully lobbied to have the strips installed throughout the new stations.

He could not recall their measurements at the Glen Innes crossing, but emphasised that blind people were not meant to stand on them.

They were meant to find them with their canes, and then stand well back.

He said the strips were an invaluable safety aid, which he understood were to become standard throughout New Zealand, but he welcomed any further improvement.

Mrs Turner and supporters have won a campaign for trial automatic gates to be installed at the Silverstream crossing where her son walked in front of a train while staring at the ground, preparing himself for an exam and unaware he was in danger.

Although rail authorities argued the crossing was one of country's best-protected, a coroner said he believed Michael Turner would not have died had he been confronted by a physical barrier.

The gates will be the first in New Zealand when they are erected this week for more than $110,000 and the Railways Corporation said it would consider using them elsewhere if they proved successful.

Despite her victory, Mrs Turner said she wanted to do more to ensure other parents were not put through similar grief.

"I made a promise to Michael when we turned off his life support that I would do everything possible to see that no other child at a level crossing walks in front of a train."

This brought her to Auckland to console the mother of 5-year-old Zyon Batten, who was killed on a crossing in Takanini last year, and she visited Glen Innes after learning how a 16-year-old schoolgirl died there in 1999 in similar circumstances to her son's accident.