Re: Surrey Hills - another crossing failure II

["Roderick Smith" <rodsmith@werple.net.au>]

I was referring to the treatment of Watsonia Rd, not Grimshaw St.

Michael is partly right: I did exaggerate what the council did to its nice
bridge: it choked up Watsonia Rd to make sure that none but locals would
use it, and then got the Greensborough bypass.

I am not comparing Mont Albert Rd or Union Rd to Grimshaw St, and have
never advocated leaving Canterbury Rd as a level crossing.

In the 1910s, level crossings from Hawthorn to Camberwell were eliminated.
In about 1960 the level crossing at East Richmond was eliminated.
In about 1968 the level crossing at Canterbury was eliminated.
Subsequently, Elgar Rd & Station St crossings at Box Hill were eliminated.

Union Rd level crossing is now the first crossing out of Melbourne on this
line.  It and Mont Albert Rd have more trains per day than any other level
crossing in Melbourne, with a mix of stopping and express trains.  This can
result in the booms being down for very long periods of time, as the
signalling thinks that there is insufficient time to go up and come down
again.  They are also failure prone.

Lowering the railway at the time of construction of the third track would
have been relatively cheap, and would have eliminated two crossings with
one project.

Union Rd suffers (as do other north-south roads intersecting this line)
from heavy commuter traffic flows driving from homes in the classy eastern
suburbs to workplaces in the flatter south-eastern areas.  Because of the
proximity of east west roads (Canterbury Rd at Surrey Hills; Maroondah Hwy
at Nunawading), level-crossing delays are exacerbated.

-- 
Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Michael Walker <walker@hotkey.net.au> wrote in article 
Mont Albert Road and Union Road are not especially busy roads compared
> to Grimshaw Street and their main problems seem to be from the trains,
not
> because they are inherently busy roads.
Would you have preferred that they left Canterbury Road with a
> railway crossing so you could have had Union Road lowered?