Abstract:
Traffic safety has become a momentous issue at level crossings in Dhaka city. Level
crossing accidents has become a common phenomenon in Dhaka city. There are 42
nos. railway level crossings and 6 nos. railway stations in Dhaka city between Jurine
and Abdullahpur of which 29 level crossings are authorized and 13 nos. are
unauthorized 20 of these are associated with major roads and remaining 22 are
associated with minor roads.
The operational management and control is one of the important factors of safety at
level crossings. Most of the people involved in level crossing operation are not well
trained. The geometric parameters at crossings such as visibility, radii of curvatures of
approach roads, illegal parking at approach road of crossings, lower length of straight
portion of road, width of gates, distance between gate lodge and road centerline etc are
found to be substandard, which are also the key issues for safety problems at level
crossings and are taken into account in this study. The road surface condition is also
considered as a safety factor. Information is collected from different sources for
analysis and identifying the causes of safety problems at level crossings in Dhaka city.
The field data collection is also carried out at selected accident-prone level crossings.
The level crossing accidents is 14% of all rail related accidents in Dhaka division and
the same in Dhaka city is 53%. So the rate of level crossing accidents in Dhaka city is
very high. The analysis of data related to safety at level crossings is carried out
extensively. The vulnerable crossing types, the geometric problems, the warning
measures are assessed. Advanced controlling system has been studied to suggest for
improvement of safety status.
In this study, the Traffic Moments (TM) of the accident-prone level crossings are
studied. The TM Values for Khilgaon, Mogbazar and Staff road level crossings are
calculated 5977557, 3841182, and 10531296 respectively. These TM values are much
higher than the top end TM values for warrant of grade separation intersection
considered in Iran, Thailand, and India which are 288000, 1000000, and 100,000
respectively. Therefore, these selected level crossings are suggested for grade
separation.
