Parents plead for warning lights at rail crossing

PARENTS of 25 rural Carterton children are asking whether someone must be killed before the train crossing on their road gets a system of warning lights and bells.
Children on Waterson's Line, near Dalefield School, regularly cross the tracks to school, to get to the school bus and to each other's houses on foot, bikes, motorbikes or horses, says mother of two Steph Mann.
Mrs Mann has been lobbying on behalf of the parents for an automatic alarm with lights and bells, but is so far unsatisfied with the response from Ontrack, the owner of the railway lines.
She had written of the parents' concerns to the mayor of Carterton, Gary McPhee, who passed them on to Ontrack.
In her letter Mrs Mann said the children of Waterson's Line "all visit each other's houses and play ? as good rural children do ? predominantly outdoors ? as horse-riders, motocross bikers, on their pushbikes, walking, running, skipping ? crossing with frequency to and fro across the tracks to each other's houses and to and from Dalefield School."
"It is not my intention to sound melodramatic, but do we, as parents, have to wait until one of our beautiful, life-living children is involved in a train-related accident before some form of warning system is belatedly posted at our train crossing?" Mrs Mann asked.
A nearby crossing, Moffats Road, was the scene of a fatal collision in 1996.
Ontrack's signals planning engineer Roy Percival replied to Mrs Mann's concerns ? through the mayor ? explaining how Ontrack decides which crossings receive alarms.
Mr Percival says about half of the 1400 road level crossings have alarms.
The standard conditions for installing them include the level of rail and road traffic, how many lines there are to cross, and visibility.
Road traffic levels were last measured in 2001, and supplied to Ontrack by roading authorities, including Carterton District Council last year.
Based on those figures, Mr Percival said, Waterson's Line had only 60 per cent of the traffic required, at 120 vehicles a day. Moffats Road had an estimated 150 vehicles a day, 80 per cent of the required amount.
Seven trains cross the road during the day and seven during the night.
Mrs Mann is now asking whether traffic volumes include horses, bikes and foot traffic, and whether an updated traffic count is possible.
Carterton District Council discussed the issue this week and may conduct an updated traffic count.