180 people participated in the 4th national two-day-Level Crossing Forum organised at Network Rail Training Centre in Westwood, near Coventry (UK) on 9 and 10 December 2014.
The objective of such a forum is to highlight the work being done by Network Rail level crossing managers and their teams to reduce the risk of accidents.
Participants were from the level crossing community; British Transport Police (BTP), industry, UIC. Attendees also included two Network Rail level crossing user champions:
Tina Hughes, MBE: her daughter Olivia and her friend Charlie died in an accident at Elsenham’s pedestrian level crossing on 3 December 2005; Peter Jarrett, who sadly lost his granddaughter, Emma Lifsey, in an accident at a level crossing in December 2012. For more info on Tina Hughes’ story please watch the UIC/UNECE and FOT film made for ILCAD 2014: www.ilcad.org in which she explains how she has been working with Network Rail to help them reduce risks to improve safety at level crossings to prevent similar accidents from happening again.
The Forum was opened by Mr Darren Furness, Head of Level Crossings (LC) at Network Rail. He gave an overview of the last LC Forum organised in mid-June 2014 when some participants were awarded for their action to improve safety at level crossings.
Then the participants had the opportunity to listen to presentations on national level crossing issues on the following topics
- Importance of LC risk management,
- Human factors,
- Post incident response,
- New LC technology and business critical rules,
- Community safety and trespass,
- Glare at LCs and lighting at passive crossings,
- LC Managers’ points of view on their role
- LC safety Awareness campaigns organised by BTP
- 2014 Network Rail LC safety awareness campaigns including ILCAD 2014
- Future Network Rail LC safety awareness campaigns
- Presentation given by two Network Rail LC champions on their respective personal experiences: Tina Hughes, MBE and Peter Jarrett. They both work together with Network Rail to improve safety at level crossings.
To know more about the Network Rail (NR) Level Crossing Safety Programme visit: http://www.networkrail.co.uk/level-crossings/
There are more than 6,300 level crossings in Britain.
Finally Isabelle Fonverne was invited to take the floor to present LC activities on a global level including ILCAD embraced among other companies or countries by Network Rail:
She gave first a rapid overview on the following issues
- The success of the Global Level Crossing and Trespass prevention Symposium (GLXS) held from 3 to 8 August 2014 in Urbana-Champaign:
http://railtec.illinois.edu/GLXS/overview.php UIC is a member of the Organising Committee, next GLXS foreseen in 2016 (exact date and location tbd): read http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/412 - The Future IRU/UIC level crossing safety guidance for professionnal drivers; read: http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/399
- UNECE Group of Experts on level crossing safety (GE1): achievements so far and programme of work: http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/422 Next meeting foreseen on 29-30 January 2015 in Geneva: http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/eg_level_crossings_04.html
- European Level Crossing Forum (ELCF) that met on 13 November 2014 in Rome, read: http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/424
- She finally gave feedback on what happened during ILCAD 2014 in different countries worldwide. For information partners in the UK are Network Rail and Translink in Northern Ireland. Read: http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/403
Network Rail provided employers/professional drivers with A3 posters, leaflets, PowerPoint presentations, picture image digital communications, car/window stickers: “The most important stop of the day”. There was a campaign launch with trade media. NR was engaged in a partnership with the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) affiliated with the Scottish Government/Police. Scotland/Scottish Fire & Rescue Service and British Transport Police. SBRC emailed 130 transport related businesses (haulage members) within 54 towns and cities in Scotland. The points and contacts within the respective towns and cities automatically sent the message out to their members – (some towns have 400 businesses and some cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh have over 1,000 members.) Other companies which individuals within SBRC work with were also notified plus all SBRCs members. The membership list is on SBRCs website www.sbcc.org.uk and includes Diageo, Yodel, WH Malcolm and Amazon, to name but a few.
She also informed the meeting about the next edition in 2015 and issued a call for papers for the press conference and round table with experts to officially launch the ILCAD 2015 event hosted by TCDD on 3 June 2015 in Istanbul. Should you wish to submit a paper on the following topics, please contact fonverne at uic.org
- Engineering
- Innovative technologies
- Enforcement
- Education
- Inspection
- Human factors
- User behaviour
For more information read the minutes of the ILCAD Task Force meeting held on 14 November 2014 in Rome: http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/424
Alongside the presentations, Network Rail had organised four workshops during the two-day-forum in which participants could exchange on various topics.
Last but not least I Fonverne publicly thanked Alan Davies, RSSB, who has been Chairman of the European Level Crossing Forum (ELCF) from 2009 to 2014 for his highly appreciated contribution to ELCF work and other groups or activities (GLXS, UNECE GE1…) his commitment to level crossing safety on an international level. It is also no use reiterating that ELCF under his leadership initiated ILCAD in 2009. He was warmly applauded by the audience. We wish him good luck for the future.
Network Rail LC Safety Newsletter
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/level-crossings/safer-crossings-newsletter/
