'Ongoing improvements' being made to Horsham level crossing branded 'a nightmare'

Horsham MP Jeremy Quin met with Network Rail officials at the crossing in Parsonage Road on Friday and said he has now been assured that improvements are taking place.

He said Network Rail is now to provide him with regular updates on barrier down times so that the situation would continue to be monitored.

Problems first arose this summer after Network Rail carried out safety upgrades at the crossing in Parsonage Road, and at another at Littlehaven.

Residents complained of massive queues of cars in the area with traffic facing lengthy waits for barriers to be raised after trains had passed.

Some said they had waited so long at the crossing barriers to reach the station that they had missed their trains.

After Jeremy Quin met with rail officials at the crossing, he said he has ‘received commitments for ongoing improvements to help residents.’

He said that before the upgrade the crossing was one of the highest level crossing ‘risks’ in Sussex and the upgrade from half-barrier to CCTV-controlled full barrier had reduced the crossing's risk-score by some 18 times.

However, he said local residents had been significantly inconvenienced by the barriers being down for up to 10 minutes at a time.

Mr Quin said that Network Rail Sussex route director Katie Frost said that the timings had already improved and this would continue.

“A new system takes time to bed-in but our signallers are getting more experienced on this crossing,” said Katie. “A new set of operating instructions to support minimising the barrier downtime is already making a considerable difference which I hope is a real improvement to road users in the area.

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"Through a number of commitments we’ve made, we expect to be able to improve this further, while still keeping the significant safety benefits to passengers and the local community.”

Jeremy Quin added: “Network Rail says it has now reduced the downtime of the barriers to around 2-3 minutes per closure and I witnessed this myself during our meeting. They have committed to providing me with regular updates on barrier down times so we can monitor what I hope will be ongoing improvements.”