Yes, this fence on the other side of the track was one of the necessities
mentioned by Cliche and I would say it should be mandatory but they don't
seem to be doing it on CSELR. At UNSW in particular, students will whizz
across the traffic lanes and mount the platform anywhere along it.
Sometimes I wonder if the "railway" designers of this line were stuck on a
mental block that these were railway-height platforms and forgot that they
are only 300 mm high so are easily accessed on foot at any point! The other
reason for needing a fence of course is to guard against wrong-side door
openings and passengers unwittingly rushing out the door and under a
passing truck. (This happened in a different form in San Francisco once
when the doors were opened on the wrong side on a viaduct and somebody
stepped out and fell to their death.) This was also mentioned by Cliche - a
lot of good arguments that were to no avail.

On Saturday, 20 April 2019 18:28:13 UTC+10, Mal Rowe wrote:
>

>

> Actually, you can have protective fences with platform stops (see first

> attached pic) and Melbourne now does at each such stop.

>

> The exception was the first couple in High St, Northcote and these are

> probably the stops that Denis Cliche referred to. They didn't lose that

> argument again.

>

> See: https://tdu.to/m/195079

> https://tdu.to/m/195079/re-melbourne-firemen-hot-and-bothered-by-tram-stopsfor

> the earlier design.

>

> William is right about the stop in Flinders St station being congested,

> but that's mostly related to volume of passengers and long 'races' on the

> ramps leading to the platforms and not specific to them being centre

> platforms.

>

> Mal Rowe- now accustomed to getting off trams on either side

>