Safety Benefits

Safety is one of the biggest drivers for the Translink proposal. There can be no question about the use of rail transport over road from a safety perspective. According to the Health and Safety Executive, rail travel is six times safer than travelling by road. Between 1995 and 2002 10,000 people were killed in car accidents, whereas there were only 69 fatalities in rail crashes.

Rail is a highly regulated and controlled mode of transport with many automatic systems in place to ensure that driver error rarely results in accidents. However, there is with railways the potential for further safety improvements with the introduction of new technologies. For example, GPS satellite navigation data could, in theory, feed back in real time the positions of every train and item of rolling stock on the network to an accuracy of metres, or even centimetres. Imagine what impact this would have on the prevention of train collisions.

In direct contrast to this there are no such controls in place on the road network. If a driver falls asleep at the wheel of a 45T HGV carrying hazardous cargo, carnage inevitably ensues. Such accidents would be avoided by using the Rolling Highway.

Translink will be installing the most up-to-date signalling systems, ensuring that the Rolling Highway is the safest means of transpennine transportation.

For the 3-mile long Woodhead tunnel, Translink will employ state of the art ventilation, heat detection and fire suppression systems so that minimum restrictions apply to the freight using the route.

© Translink 2006