Monday’s Friday Reads – 19 July 2021

1. RE: Mind the Gap: Keeping trains & platforms level is a complex issue

   The thing I don’t understand about platform height is that bump – If it’s possible to add a bump to enable level boarding in one area, why is it not possible/practical to extend this to the entire platform?
   Am I missing something obvious?

   I could understand it if different rolling stock require different height bumps in different locations on the platform. But most/all platforms that have a bump ordinally serve only a single type of rolling stock?

2. @DJL the reason you cant do it on teh whole platform is that you have to do it onteh whole platform at ALL the stations, and that may not be possible because of things like access staircases, doors, existing shops etc the humps are placed in the location with the least disruption and means that if you might have to change some stuff, but not everything. raising a floor level 150mm sounds easy but it gets surprisingly complex very quickly.

3. Adding that lowering the floor on all trains is not exactly trivial either. In Liverpool the level boarding was achieved though lower floors but with ramps over the bogies AND a major programme of adjusting platform heights to the standard dimensions. Despite the lower floor, all the electrical equipment was installed under the floor.

   In East Anglia. there were different problems. Firstly they needed some diesel/electric hybrid trains and the pure electric trains had to be capable of much higher speed than in Liverpool. There is no space to accommodate the diesel generators under the lower floor, so they are located in a short vehicle in the middle of the trains. The electrical equipment is located in compartments behind the driver’s cabs and, on the electric only trains – in compartments in the adjacent ends of cars 6 and 7. The 4-car (+plus engine pod) diesel/electric hybrid train is circa 11m longer than a conventional train of comparable capacity. This matters in some locations.

   Another nagging issue is that not all the ramps are at the same angle. This catches out people who have got used to the ramps over the bogies.

   In summary, it is perfectly possible to lower the floor of metro style stock – S stock is another example – but is more of a challenge on higher speed trains. A compromise might be to provide one or two individual vehicles per train with low floor sections to facilitate boarding for people in wheelchairs, people with pushchairs etc. This is a growing trend in mainland Europe where the discrepancy between train floor and platform height is much greater than in UK

4. CXXX
   There’s also the problem of places like Acton Town, Ealing Common & Raynes Lane – Uxbridge.
   Or, where “old” companies had lower platforms than other railways … ISTM that the old LSWR had lower platforms, for instance

   Oh yes, berlin’s U-Bahn stations – QUOTE: Many of the stations are extremely plain, but the network is scattered with eccentric gems
   Like the THATCHED one at Dahlem-Dorf – Google Street view of same

5. “because of things like access staircases, doors, existing shops etc”
   Maybe there are good reasons, but these 3 don’t seem like good ones to me.
   So you remove or add an extra step to a staircase, maybe it even goes the opposite way to the main steps. Who cares? It’s already not fully accessible so a change by 1 step isn’t going to affect that.
   So the doorframe gets shorter by a few cm, the shop counter’s height is changed by a couple of inches? big deal!
   The existing humps on the platforms are never more than a handful of cm different than the rest of the platform. If they were then the slope would be too steep and would start to cause other issues.

   Sorry, but I’m just not seeing the problem with the particular issues you mention.

   I also take issue with the idea that it must be done at all stations.
   Providing the most accessible part of the train is clearly indicated (preferably on the platform), such that those who depend on the level boarding can be assured it will be available at their destination then I see no reason why the other advantages (less people falling through the gap) cannot be realised along the full length of those stations where it is possible.

   I myself once fell through the gap*. I have no idea how I managed it – I have no known mobility issues and I *was* paying attention, yet it still happend. Fortunatly I wasn’t seriously injured and was able to board without disrupting the service. Someone else may not be so lucky.
   Level board benefits everyone, not only those in a wheel chair.
   If we can provide level boarding then we should.

   By contrast, changing the trains sounds much harder.

   @Greg T – Indeed, I already mentioned different rolling stock heights as being a good reason that it isn’t practical. In these cases even a hump may be impractical.
   I am explicitly asking about platforms that already have a hump (or could practically have one).

   * That may be a slight exageration, but one foot was definitly below the platform level at one point.

6. As with other aspects of the railway (electrification, resignalling), there needs to be a rolling programme of standardising the platforms to the current standard height and offset, wherever this is possible, starting with the stations that would provide the biggest benefit to accessibility. Issues like canted track causing large gaps can be mitigated by either reducing the cant, straightening platforms or buying/retrofitting rolling stock with folding or sliding steps. None of those are easy or cheap, but not impossible.

   By having a rolling programme, you develop a team of people who know what the main issues are and how to solve them, minimising costs.

   As always, it comes down to money. But as one someone once put it, the investment needed would never have been necessary, had those who built the railway designed accessibility in from the start. So we are not paying extra “just so some disabled people can access the train”, but rather paying for the costs of our past mistakes and fulfilling our moral duty as a society to make public transport available and accessible for all. In the long term, that is money very well spent, particularly when it is combined with a more general modernisation where necessary.

7. @DJL: Obligatory read when mentioning doors and platform heightening: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37223043

   A follow-up a year later (!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s8hNv62x64 (in German, but machine translated captions are available)

8. @Albert J.P.

   That particular situation seems to have since been resolved.

   https://www.t-online.de/leben/reisen/reisetipps/id_86467970/bahnhof-des-jahres-2019-bahnstation-in-bad-bentheim-wurde-einst-verspottet.html

   But that has less to do with the difficulties in raising platforms, and more to do with bureaucracy – DB was responsible for the platform, whereas the local council was responsible for the station building. The council couldn’t get the funding in time to rebuild the station building at the same time, whilst DB was unwilling to postpone their platform works (probably due to them being bound by various accessibility regulations with deadlines that they would rather not miss). It’s not a situation that’s unknown in the UK (see Hammersmith Bridge), but it’s one that can be avoided if the will is there, which in the GBR of the future should be the case, at least in theory.

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