Passenger Trains > 48 grade crossings in New York City?

A recent news item (9/6/19) in Nikkei's Asian Review, about a passenger train grade crossing collision near Tokyo, Japan notes that they have 620 grade crossings in that city.  The large city in 2nd place is New York City, with 48.  Where are those crossings located?  AFAIK there are none in Manhattan.
They must be including the boroughs on Long Island, though I didn't realize there were that many. I don't know if any of the Staten Island transit route crosses at grade.

IDK.  Public RR/highway crossings at grade in NYC?  Nothing on the Ex-NYC that I can remember. LIRR might have a few on the Atlantic branch. And a few on the SIRT.  Hell Gate line..nothing I know of. Bat ridge line...maybe a few?  South Brooklyn Rwy has some street running, and maybe a grade crossing or 2.
The subway system has pvt grade crossings in most of the yards..just employee vehicle crossings.

I'd say there are more grade crossings in Chicago or Los Angeles..altho Idk exactly where the city borders lines are in either city.  Loads of grade crossings in greater LA..but how many within the city limits??

pdt Wrote:
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> IDK.  Public RR/highway crossings at grade in
> NYC?  Nothing on the Ex-NYC that I can remember.
> LIRR might have a few on the Atlantic branch. And
> a few on the SIRT.  Hell Gate line..nothing I
> know of. Bat ridge line...maybe a few?  South
> Brooklyn Rwy has some street running, and maybe a
> grade crossing or 2.
> The subway system has pvt grade crossings in most
> of the yards..just employee vehicle crossings.
>
> I'd say there are more grade crossings in Chicago
> or Los Angeles..altho Idk exactly where the city
> borders lines are in either city.  Loads of grade
> crossings in greater LA..but how many within the
> city limits??

You mean the LIRR Lower Montauk Branch, which is now all NY&A freight. The line to Brooklyn is either in tunnels or on an el - been that way since 1948. 

SIR has had none since the 1960's. 

pdt Wrote:
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> I'd say there are more grade crossings in Chicago
> or Los Angeles..altho Idk exactly where the city
> borders lines are in either city.  Loads of grade
> crossings in greater LA..but how many within the
> city limits??

Over 500 sq mi within the Los Angeles city limits, so, many, many grade crossings.  The closest main line crossing to City Hall (other than light rail) is on Main St less than 1.5 miles from CIty Hall.

There are many grade crossings on the Staten Island Rapid Transit. And a few on the inactive section of the North Shore line.

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Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> There are many grade crossings on the Staten
> Island Rapid Transit. And a few on the inactive
> section of the North Shore line.

There are precisely zero. 

https://forgotten-ny.com/2001/04/new-yorks-remaining-grade-rr-crossings/

In New York City, all of the grade crossings are many of the outer boroughs. In Queens, the LIRR has grade crossings on the spur to Long Island City, like two or three of them. On the Pt. Washington Line, there is one grade crossing in Little Neck, located in Queens but almost at the Nassau County border. I don't know of any grade crossings on the Atlantic Branch of the LIRR. In Queens, on what used to be used by LIRR but now used by New York & Atlantic, there are multiple grade crossings. In Brooklyn, I think there are grade crossings on the tracks used by the New York Harbor Railroad. Much of the Bay Ridge Line is grade separated. In the Bronx, I believe that the freight spurs have them. I don't railfan the freight only lines within NYC and often have no reason to go to those areas so I can't give you much of an answer about those lines.

On Thursday, around noon, a commuter train collided with a truck at a crossing in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, killing the truck driver and injuring 35 passengers. The accident drew international media attention

The collision occurred at an "unopened railway crossing" -- defined by the transport ministry as a crossing where the gates remain shut for more than 40 minutes at a stretch. Such long waits happen because of the high volume of train traffic during rush hour in big cities like Tokyo.

The crash in Yokohama occurred at a crossing where the gate remains shut for up to 48 minutes during peak hours. It took place near shops, office and houses, and could have been more serious if it had happened during the morning or evening rush.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Location/East-Asia/Japan/Train-crash-highlights-risk-of-Tokyo-s-unopened-rail-crossings

(And people in the US complain about a crossing blocked for 10 minutes.)

I'm not sure where they qualify their statistics. Perhaps LA and Chicago do not qualify as major cities? I thought they might be counting only passenger crossings and only within "city limits" but I can only assume they didn't look past New York (the largest US city) to see other cities.

Look at the aerials of 1st Ave along the
Brooklyn waterfront -- if you driving NE
on 1st Ave you have to cross a bunch
of tracks. So, how do you define
"grade crossing"? And does the track
have to be active?

A quick search of the FRA's Crossing Inventory finds 27 public at grade road crossings in the City of New York ... that expands to 62 when including pedestrian only and private crossings. All crossings are "open".

A similar search of the FRA's Crossing Inventory finds 343 public at grade road crossings in the City of Chicago (239 in the City of Los Angeles). Apparently these are not major cities.

On Staten Island during the 1930s Depression, SIRT's then-owner B&O eliminated about a dozen grade crossings on the far South Shore end of the 13-mile Tottenville line.
They finished the job in the '60s, by bridging or cutting under the remaining half-dozen, finally ending the Forgotten Borough's rail/auto collision problems.

The North Shore and South Beach lines stopped running in 1953.

NYC Transit  took over the now-Staten Island Railway in 1971.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/19 17:01 by Abqfoamer.

Well I win anyway.  Chicago and LA have way more than NY.

(And yea, I meant the  LIRR (NY&A)  lower montauk freight line, not the Atlantic line to Brooklyn. )

The grade crossings are
2 public (11th St. and Borden Ave.) on the LIRR Main Line
8 public and 2 private on the Lower Montauk
8 public and 1 private on the Bushwick Branch
1 public and 1 private on the Oak Point Link in the Bronx
2 public and 6 private on the Hunts Point spur in the Bronx
13 on NY-NJ Rail up First Ave.
3 on South Brooklyn Railway
1 at Howland Hook on Staten Island
3 public and 6 private on the Travis Branch on Staten Island
 

Howland Hook and Travis Branch are no longer a part of the MTA-SIR, nor physically connected, as most of the North Shore Line is gone, but part of the national railway network. 

Yes, the severed portion of the SIRT/SIR former North Shore commuter line  serves a truck-to-rail garbage transfer facility at the former city Fresh Kills Landfill, also moves freight to/from the Howland Hook Container Terminal on a single-track lift bridge over the Arthur Kill channel,  connecting them to mainland trash dumps or US freight lines.
But there are no major grade crossings involving passenger rail traffic along the mostly abandoned North Shore Line from St. George ferry terminal since 1953
.
New York City Parks Department has covered and transformed the formerly unpleasanst, smelly, eyesore Landfill  into the city's largest (over 2000 acres) rolling, green, stream-laced recreation area for joggers, kayakers, sports enthusiasts, kite flyers, BTW.
Wasn't  much fun living a mile away years ago when the wind was wrong!

Also, it's reported astronauts up in the space station circling the earth noticed the old Fresh Kills.
.
 
  
 



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/19 23:14 by Abqfoamer.