Upgrading the barrier from half to full and the increase in trains would have led to a situation where barrier down time was too great, leading to a level of risk which would be too high. To reduce the level of risk to an acceptable level we were required to investigate solutions on the road network.
The scheme had five key areas that required our attention. These included:
Our first involvement was to understand existing usage at the level crossing through surveys to investigate origins and destinations of users, categorising and counting traffic, and measuring local congestion. This needed to involve both motorised traffic and non-motorised traffic.
To support this process, we undertook ANPR surveys to understand trip patterns along with level crossing barrier down time surveys and the associated queue lengths generated during the barrier down time.
Using traffic data, we were able to forecast future traffic flows along the B1382 with TEMPro. This included user numbers and wider trips. We considered the impact of East Cambridgeshire’s Local Plan, Ely North Development, and the Ely Southern Bypass. This included accounting for housing, employment growth, and rail service increases. Our project team utilised the East Cambridgeshire Local Plan Transport Tests report to support our assumptions made during the forecasting task.
After gathering data and predicting future traffic at the three level crossings, the impact of completely closing these crossings was assessed. We worked in partnership with Network Rail and Cambridgeshire County Council on this task.
This working highlighted the need to prioritise the crossings in the order of the Peterborough line, then Norwich line, and finally the Kings Lynn line. Prioritising the Peterborough line was due to us identifying the opportunity to upgrade infrastructure, which may enable one crossing to remain open.
Our team undertook a robust review of future rail growth, barrier down time, traffic rerouting, and impacts on journey time, vehicle kilometres, roads, public transport, and emergency services. Additionally, we evaluated the effects on pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, businesses, and residents between the crossings.
Following the creation of the initial study framework, we needed to explore solutions such as TROs to reduce usage at the level crossing to lower risks to an acceptable level for Network Rail. Our key considerations included enforcement methods, exclusions of the TRO, and handling visitors and deliveries.
Our final study report also investigated road-based infrastructure solutions to allow level crossing closures, that assumed the railway remained unchanged. We developed high-level costings and calculated benefit-cost ratios. Our findings were presented under the five-case methodology: Strategic, Economic, Financial, Commercial, and Management cases.
Supporting the report was a bespoke traffic model that illustrated the findings from the report to justify our recommendations, and provide an evidence base to support the five-case model for the business case.
