Safety Assurance is a big part of rail transit design but I wouldn't say it is a significant cost. Building and operating rail wouldn't cost half as much if we stripped some of the safety assurance process out of it. Maybe a couple of percentage points of cost for orders of magnitude more fatal accidents. The systems would mostly all still be there, unless you wanted to do something as drastic as removing all interlocking/train protection and rely entirely on drivers and timed signals - basically treat it like a road network - but that would have huge operational impacts - train headways have to be much larger if you can't know what sections have trains in them - as well as being extremely unsafe.
Frankly, these precautions exist for a reason, and it is because many many people died in the early days of rail. Many people who work in rail, particularly in ops/sigs/assurance are proud of how safe rail transport now is.
(I work in Engineering Assurance on rail infrastructure projects).
Fair enough, thanks for sharing. It's not really serious proposal but interesting to learn it wouldn't work. I guess the ongoing cost of rails and rolling stock are killer.
Much of the infrastructure cost is boring stuff like earthworks and retaining walls and moving existing services that are in the way. The shift to in-cab signalling saves/will save a bunch of money on lineside equipment maintenance (because you don't need it).
I was thinking about your comment and one way to save considerable infrastructure costs is more level crossing and less overpasses/bridges, but train vs pedestrian or train vs car are common and messy. Plus level crossings wreck traffic flow on the surrounding road network.
Frankly, these precautions exist for a reason, and it is because many many people died in the early days of rail. Many people who work in rail, particularly in ops/sigs/assurance are proud of how safe rail transport now is.
(I work in Engineering Assurance on rail infrastructure projects).