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SafeRails video

Is this device the answer to tram track danger for cyclists?

Dutch students design simple insert for tram tracks as part of city competition - if they win, they'll get to test whether it works...
by Laura Laker
Thu, Jan 05, 2017 14:09
11

Two Dutch students have come up with a potential design solution to prevent cyclists’ wheels becoming trapped in tram tracks.

Roderick Buijs’ and Ward Kuiters are developing SafeRails, a plastic insert which plugs the gap in the tram rail for cyclists to safely cross, but compresses when a tram drives over it, in response to the dangers tram tracks pose for cyclists in cities around the world, whose wheels can end up stuck in the rails.

SafeRails is the pair's contribution to the Hague Innovators Challenge, a city-wide competition aimed at solving some of the social and environmental problems of city living.

Edinburgh Council looking into anti-skid coating for tram tracks

Buijs said: “When you’re cycling across tram rails you have to take care not to get stuck in the rails. Every Dutchman knows this problem. They have encountered it themselves or know someone who has. That’s why we wanted to find some sort of solution for this problem.”

 

The SafeRail is an asymmetrical insert made from recycled plastic with elastic properties that allow it to repeatedly compress and reform under pressure from passing trams, but will not compress for cyclists. It is not a proven concept yet, but its inventors hope to test it in The Hague and, if it is a success, introduce it further afield, across the Netherlands.

SafeRails is one of 70 submissions to the Hague Innovators Challenge, part of Impact City, a hub that connects entrepreneurs with governments, international companies and research centres, aiming to make a positive impact. SafeRail has now been short listed to the final nine entries, and is currently a close second in the competition with 1,502 votes, behind a car share app, Toogethr. It is possible to vote for a project until 17 January.

 

 

tram tracks
The Hague
the Netherlands
Laura Laker

Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.

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11 comments

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ajft | 7 years ago
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My experience with crossing tram lines here in Melbourne is that the vast majority of falls are as a result of the tyres sliding on the metal surface, especially when wet, and not from the bike wheel dropping into the slot.  Be interesting to see what some decent before/after tests of these inserts on a real section of tram track with real numbers of bikes.

 

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barbarus | 7 years ago
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Because pissed British students could divert them anywhere with a can of white paint?

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Roger Geffen | 7 years ago
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To Hsiaolc and SuperPython59:

Unfortunately, decisions on whether to invest in trams aren't guided by your sensible opinions.  Nor are they made by AlexB's traffic engineering friend.  So suggesting that s/he should be made to provide evidence to support those decisions is possibly missing the point. 

Those decisions are made by politicians. And they are typically based on those politicians' perceptions of what will attract maximum usage of the public transport systems they invest in.

During the mid-1990s, UK transport planning went through a phase when every half-decent sized city wanted to have a tram system.  It was a kind of civic status-symbol.

Then the Edinburgh system went badly wrong, and investing in trams has now gone out of fashion again.

From the perspective of cycle safety, that's good news.

What puzzles me though is why optical- or magnetic-guided busways have never caught on - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bus.  We have a few UK examples of kerb-guided busways: notably Cambridge to St Ives, also one between Luton and Dunstable.  But you have to go to France or the Netherlands to find optical or magnetic guided busways.

These systems allow buses (including tram-like articulated buses) to follow a white line on the road, or a magnetic wire just beneath the road surface, as precisely as if the bus was on rails.  Hence these guided buses can pull up alongside a platform as precisely as if it were a tram or a train, allowing easy wheel-chair access.

They can also be given dedicated tracks which, like tram-tracks, can't be used by motor-vehicles. These can be done very space-efficient ly- i.e. two guided buses going in in opposite directions can pass one another as closely as if they were on rails.

In other words, they can be as quick, as slick and as long as trams, and can look and feel very similar for passengers.  Yet their installation and maintenance costs are a fraction of those of tram schemes.  And without all the cycle safety hazards!

It would be interesting to know if AlexB's traffic engineering friend can explain why these haven't caught on yet...

 

Roger Geffen

Cycling UK

Avatar
fenix | 7 years ago
0 likes

Blimey. It'd be cheaper to market 'buses' as 'trains but on roads'  and have I dunno, Princess Kate advertising them. 

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alexb | 7 years ago
2 likes

I have a friend who is a transport engineer. I asked him why we go to all the trouble and disruption of digging up roads and laying tram tracks rather than using trolley buses or just more buses.

The answer is all to do with class perception.

Poor people use buses, if you want middle class people to leave their cars at home, they are more willing to transfer to trams which are seen as "modern" and "clean", than buses, which are seen as "dirty" and sometimes "dangerous".

See in this light, you can see why town planners do go to all that trouble.

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hsiaolc replied to alexb | 7 years ago
1 like

alexb wrote:

I have a friend who is a transport engineer. I asked him why we go to all the trouble and disruption of digging up roads and laying tram tracks rather than using trolley buses or just more buses.

The answer is all to do with class perception.

Poor people use buses, if you want middle class people to leave their cars at home, they are more willing to transfer to trams which are seen as "modern" and "clean", than buses, which are seen as "dirty" and sometimes "dangerous".

See in this light, you can see why town planners do go to all that trouble.

 

I don't buy that.  There are no trams in central london.

I don't see trams are higher class than buses. 

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cyclisto | 7 years ago
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It seems really thin, after a cloudless summer I think it will break.

The Strail solution that Eric D posted seems more robust. It's problem is that it would be much more expensive and require lots of roadworks. So if these guys managed to make something that could last for a couple of years before being replaced and manage to make it at a cost of less than 1£/m, installing fresh inserts every couple of years perhaps it wouldn't be a bad solution.

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Eric D | 7 years ago
1 like

Plenty of existing exeriments and products

http://www.strail.de/index.php?id=197&L=1

http://www.fietsberaad.nl/index.cfm?lang=en&section=nieuws&mode=newsArti...

http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=14264&page=7#post-...

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CXR94Di2 | 7 years ago
2 likes

good idea, it needs to have the longevity to recover from compression over many years of use and exposure to the elements

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ktache | 7 years ago
2 likes

Haven't we seen rubber inserts that do roughly the same thing?

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matthewn5 | 7 years ago
0 likes

Does it float? and if so, wouldn't it float out of the gap in wet weather?

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