An evaluation of a suburban railway pedestrian crossing safety programme

This study evaluated a programme of educational and environmental (access p revention) interventions designed to reduce the incidence of illegal and un safe crossing of the rail corridor at a suburban station in Auckland, New Z ealand. Immediately after the programme of interventions, the proportion of those crossing the rail corridor by walking across the tracks directly rat her than using the nearby overbridge had decreased substantially. Three mon ths later, the decrease was even greater. However, the educational and envi ronmental interventions were introduced simultaneously so that the effects of each could not be separated, nor could other unmeasured factors be ruled out. Anonymous surveys administered immediately before and 3 months after the interventions indicated that while awareness of the illegality of walki ng across the tracks had increased slightly, perception of risk had not cha nged. This suggests that the educational interventions may have had less ef fect than the access prevention measures. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.