AHC Downunder: Victoria removes more level crossings after WWI

I live in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and our metropolitan are has an unusually large number of level crossings for a major metropolis. Now I've heard we had plenty of money to remove level crossings at that time, but it was instead spent on the Great Ocean Road, which seems to have been built as a tourist attraction.
So suppose that the money spent on the Great Ocean Road were instead put into level crossing removal. We would have fewer remaining level crossings.
Even by the interwar period, and that's when Melbourne suburban was electrified, many of these level crossings were already a relic of the past, even though semaphore signalling was still in daily use network wide and nearly every level crossing in the metropolitan area had manually operated swing gates.
So by removing level crossings at this time, there would have been a considerable reduction in the number of gatekeepers along the line, even with signalman and gatekeepers still employed at the crossings that remain. So level crossings may have remained maunally actuated, but maybe still upgraded, but with gates or (full) barriers still operated by signalmen, rather than being replaced by automatic half-barriers.
 
I get to work quicker.

I doubt that level crossing delays were a big enough issue in the 20s to warrant a major public works programme.
 
But we did remove some level crossings very early on. This happened in the time of cable trams, many level crossings were grade separated along tramlines as they were constructed, the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus (MT&OC) company was required by Victoria Railways (VR) to cover the cost of it.
We did remove some more level crossings around the time we electrified our suburban railways, this being in the 1920s. The idea is to consider an alternative timeline where we removed even more instead of building the Great Ocean Road.
 
A better project would probably be double-gauging or outright converting the Victorian lines to Standard Gauge from their current Broad/Irish Gauge.

And the GOR was actually built as a war memorial, though it started out as a make-work project, though there were a number of other make-work projects available that could have been of more benefit.
 
I'm not familiar with the make-work concept, but level crossing removals would have provided work for the soldiers too, I think.

As for gauge, that's for another alternative history thread.

I don't see how a road could be built as a war memorial.
 
Make-work project are project designed primarily or exclusively to provide civilian jobs, whether with or without other benefits, and in the case of the GOR, mostly without. As for the memorial bit, I don't know, wikipedia and other sites have it down as a war memorial and I'm in no position to argue.
 
Reasons for removing more crossings earlier

And the level crossing removal would have make-work with other benefits. First of all, we still have something here called trams. At the time, fourteen crossings between tramways in our streets and railways* (obviously not in the road but at street level**) were at grade, as mentioned in this list.
Two of them, both on the section of track between Burnley and Camberwell, were indeed grade separated at the same time the line was electrified. The tram/rail level crossings still in use right after electrification were fitted with overhead squares, and later catch points interlocked with tram signals.***
So in fact, grade separation along tram routes would in fact have benefited trams. The other thing to remember is that train speed is restricted over crossings with tramways.
Even if delays at crossings at the time might not have been as much as today, grade separation would have saved us from the delays we have faced since then.
At the time, almost all our crossings had swing gates, which were operated by a signalman (interlocked gates) or a gatekeeper (handgates). There was no audible warning, or even visual crossing signals, the signmal or gatekeeper simply waited for a gap in the traffic before swinging round the gates.
So by replacing more level crossings with bridges would have cutback on gatekeepers along the lines, even if still employed on every crossing that remained.
For an example, consider our suburban railway to Broadmeadows. It runs under a tramway in the road just north of a northwestern suburban station called Ascot Vale, and then it's uphill to a level crossing right next to another suburban station called Moonee Ponds.
There was once a tramway serving this station but the last few hundred meteres were closed in the 1920s. It's possible that this section of track would have been extended over the railway had it been lowered early on. This lowering is currently being proposed as an option for removing a crossing just before the next station (Essondon).
We do currently have a programme to remove level crossings, on which the swing gates (which covered the full road width on train approach) have long since been replaced by automatic half-barriers, with bells that sound throughout the period the crossing is activated. And the Gardiner one (with a tramway in the road) is the first to go under the first package.

*There were another two, one just north of Queensbridge and another in Clitfon Hill which were grade separated earlier.
**A surface railway may also be in a cutting or on an embankment, in other cases it can be said to be at street level because city/suburban streets are rarely in cuttings or on embankments, and so if it crosses streets, it does so on the same level, and is thus at street level.
***These were introduced after an accident on a level crossing at Deepdine, which was on our only suburban railway not to be electrified, this being closed duing WWII.
 
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Grade crossing removal would be a terrific public works/employment scheme and the 1920's was when a lot of US states started looking hard at crossing elimination. But trying to get federal, state, and local authorities-and the railroads involved-to agree on the splitting of the costs is the spanner in the works. It was probably a lot easier for the government to simply build a new road elsewhere with its own money and authority.
 
Wow that's interesting

So a lot of US states were keen on level crossing elimination at a time when wigwags were still fitted to new crossings, and back in the 1920s, crossing signals with pairs of alternate red flashing lights did not yet exist.
 
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