Preventing railway suicides through level crossing removal: a multiple-arm pre-post study design in Victoria, Australia

Abstract

Purpose: Rail level crossing removals to improve transport performance across metropolitan Melbourne (state of Victoria) resulted in new rail fencing and grade-separation of tracks from the surrounding environment at several sites. These design changes restricted pedestrian access to the rail tracks, which is a countermeasure known to prevent railway suicide in other settings. We examined whether any such suicide prevention effect followed the removals. Methods: We used a multiple-arm pre-post design to test whether a decrease in monthly frequency of railway suicides occurred at level crossing removal sites (intervention sites), compared to randomly matched sites where level crossings had no..