From: finfer@optonline.net   
      
   On 2/17/2015 8:37 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote:   
   > On 2/17/2015 19:03, Nobody wrote:   
   >> She doesn't need to know how many trains per hour use that main line,   
   >>> given that she knew there was a specific train coming and she could   
   >>> see it coming.   
   >   
   >   
   > This thread has reach max tedium and I'm about to filter it off, but as   
   > a parting gift.   
   >   
   > One of my favorite sources ofexamples of the sheer idiocy of Important   
   > People is the intersection of Churchill Road and Alma Street in Palo   
   > Alto, California.   
   >   
   > Now I have not been there in years so I have no idea what the current   
   > situation is but when I lived, worked, and shopped in the area through   
   > the 1970s and 1980s the intersection was light controlled and and there   
   > was space for a total of four north-east bound cars between the limit   
   > line and the place where passing west ("north") bound trains ("Caltrain"   
   > nee Southern Pacific Peninsula Service) would remove bumper stickers.   
   >   
   > Now the part that my memory fails to explain is the fact that there was   
   > an interlock from the rail signals to the car signals such that when the   
   > bells and lights started, Alma and south-west bound Charleston got red   
   > lights and north-east bound Charleston got green lights.  This should   
   > have drained the track crossing, but maybe the north-east lights went to   
   > red before the guard came down.   
   >   
   > In any case (and btw, the nature if the streets is that it is virtually   
   > certain that all vehicle traffic is (was) local), every time a train   
   > went by there would be four cars between the limit line and the tracks.   
   >   An d about 8 times in 10, a fifth car would come up behind and go into   
   > a spastic panic; horn honking, arm waving,   
   > spittle-coating-the-windshield panic.  But there was no place for the   
   > four of us to go.   
   >   
   > Hmm--nobody ever got hit while I was there--maybe draining green lights   
   > had not yet come up for us, but did come up in time (nowadays I don't   
   > know what happens with the mid-westerners that have moved there--they   
   > never like to enter an intersection except on an amber or red light. And   
   > we didn't have chat and angry birds and words cause additional delays.   
   >   
   >  From the descriptions in this thread I am betting "suicide"--we used to   
   > get a lot of those.   
   >   
      
   I came across a crossing outside of Dallas on the TRE line like that.  A   
   traffic light is set up on the far side of the crossing, and there is   
   room for maybe two or three cars between the tracks and the light.  It   
   is a very busy street (the one the Hilton Anatole is on).  When that   
   light is red, cars routinely stop on the tracks.  I would expect there   
   would be accidents there on a regular basis.  I did not see one while I   
   was there.  Why wouldn't there be an interlocked light on the other side   
   of the crossing to prevent traffic from stopping on the tracks?   
      
   Michael Finfer   
   Bridgewater, NJ   
      
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