KiwiRail senior level crossing engineer Eddie Cook has won a prestigious international award for research on level crossing safety.
The paper, on “Level Crossing Safety Impact Assessments (LCSIA) for Vehicle and Pedestrian Crossings” was prepared by Cook, along with Shane Turner from transport consultancy Abley and Shaun Bosher from engineering firm Stantec.
It received a Best Paper Award at the 2020 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting held in Washington DC last week.
The conference was attended by around 14,000 transport professionals.
The paper looked at the changes KiwiRail has made to assessing crash risks at level crossings with new processes in place.
Assessments now take into account information such as incident data and the opinions of locomotive engineers to better inform decision making and provide a more consistent approach.
“It is gratifying to receive this recognition from our peers,” Cook says.
“Safety is our top priority, and we are always looking to improve the way we do things.”
