THE railway crossing in Tyabb was supposed to have boom gates installed 19 months before a 24-year-old, pregnant preschool teacher was hit and killed by the Stony Point train on January 28 last year.
Kay-Alexandra Stanley of Mornington, a popular staff member at Tyabb Preschool, was driving to Tyabb on the Australia Day long weekend to prepare for the new school year when her car and the train collided about 10.30am.
Information obtained by The Independent reveals other factors on January 28, as well as other problems at the crossing, may have contributed to the death of Ms Stanley, who was due to marry her fiance Brett Vogel of Mornington just weeks later.
Under a contract with VicTrack, Invensys Westinghouse Signals was supposed to have installed boom gates by June 28, 2006, exactly 19 months before the fatal crash.
Contract VT0213 was a $1.95million
job for boom gates, flashing lights and pedestrian gates at 10 level crossings in country Victoria, including Tyabb, and one at Camberwell. Then Transport Minister Peter Batchelor announced boom gates for Tyabb on September 29, 2005.
Other factors that may have led to the death of Ms Stanley and that may be investigated by the state coroner include:
VicRoads had warned VicTrack the crossing was unsafe in 2000.
The crossing had obsolete incandescent flashing lights that were replaced by brighter LED lights the day after the fatality, before an investigation had started. They were installed by Mainco, a joint venture with Connex.
In 2006, VicRoads installed traffic lights at the intersection of Frankston-Flinders and Mornington-Tyabb roads, which is about 200 metres east of the railway crossing, but ignored complaints from locals that the brighter LED lights at the intersection made it difficult in certain conditions to see the old-style railway crossing flashing lights.
Mornington Peninsula Shire approved the construction of 14 units near the crossing in mid-2005, even though changes to the Transport Act the following year would not have allowed their construction.
The railway line side of the property had a two-metre-high acoustically treated fence that may have reduced drivers' ability to hear the train's warning horn. A request to the shire in April this year to see the full plans for the units was refused and the inquirer was told to put in a freedom of information request.
Neither VicRoads nor VicTrack objected to the proposed units when asked by the shire in 2003, when the planning permit was first submitted.
Government authorities used the existence of a gas pipe near the crossing as a reason work did not start until late January last year, but APA Group approved Westinghouse's boom gates plans on August 1, 2007. The boom gate installation was completed on February 18 last year after
being started the day after Ms Stanley died. The State Government had stated the boom gates would not be installed until June last year.
The Department of Transport warned Westinghouse twice about the contract running
late but did not terminate it, although the department has suspended the company from tendering for other level-crossing contracts.
The Government knew the Tyabb crossing, which had warning lights installed in the 1960s, did not meet Australian Standard AS1742.7, which was upgraded in 1987, 1993 and 2007.
The death of Kay Stanley was investigated by Public Transport Safety Victoria, a division of the Department of Transport, but the report was not provided to a Hastings police investigator or the state coroner.
The Independent believes the coroner now has a copy of the report, but has yet to fix a date for a coronial inquest.
Earlier this year, after five letters from Hastings MP Neale Burgess and Flinders federal MP Greg Hunt, the Government said the 20 level crossings on the Frankston to Stony Point line had been assessed according to the Australian Level Crossing Assessment Model.
Fifteen crossings had boom gates and five with just warning lights were listed as sites for priority upgrading.
Bungower Road, Somerville, is scheduled to be the first to get boom gates, promised by the end of next year.
Tyabb truckie Geoff Young was killed at this crossing in August 2007.
The other four are Park Lane in Somerville, Urquhart Crescent in Bittern, HMAS Cerberus main entrance in Crib Point and Disney Street in Crib Point.
In State Parliament last week, Mr Burgess, who has been a strong campaigner for boom gates on the Stony Point line since 2005, asked: "How long must the community wait before this Government understands that immediate action must be taken to respond to such tragedies by installing the simplest of measures to provide far greater protection - boom barriers?"
He said boom gates cost between $300,000 and $500,000, a small price to pay to save a life.
"Any opportunity to expedite the installation of boom gates at life-threatening level crossings should be taken."
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