@pony I'd heard of extra tunnels for smaller creatures being built in some road constructions of Northern Europe but not as much for larger ones; although living in the UK I often forget #bears, #moose and other large creatures are still native to many parts of #Europe (work colleagues from RO said there are loads in their town, because of excessive habitat destruction from building)

@vfrmedia Identifying important biocorridors is part of the EIA for any larger project. And you can't do anything nowadays without it.

http://www.selmy.cz/data/images/ohrozeni/podchod%20pod%20zeleznici_650-uzke.jpg

They made for example this thing on an existing railway track during an upgrade (it was just a continuous embankment before). It's supposedly for larger animals, probably even bears. People hated it as a totally unnecessary cost either way.

@pony even when there are redevelopments at my workplace we have to do "EU wildlife survey" and avoid disrupting wildlife but it doesn't cost that much/delay the work and one of the "selling points" of this particular retiremement home is the patients can live in rural area near the wildlife so its not a bad thing! (there are many badgers as well as foxes and 30 different bird species, some are EU redlisted)

@vfrmedia It's a different scale here, this bridge must have costed millions of euros while adding nothing to the project itself (or even tourism, it's not in on any path to anywhere) and of course, there are lot of places that could use something for people and got nothing.

But in the wider context, there are now wolves and bears migrating through the Carpathians back, so I guess it's quite important. (Obligatory cheap infographic attached.)

@pony it might look like sunk cost but I expect the aftermath of a collision between $largecreature and a train is going to be a *lot* more Euros than building any amount of bridges (and its well known the larger creatures are returning to Central Europe, I've been reading about increasing bear sightings around AT/IT and the possible return of bears to DE once more)

@vfrmedia Nah, not really, cost of hitting a cow is usually something like a week in the shop for the loco and obligatory delays. And you hardly get much larger than a cow. Dragons are sadly extinct :) Probably worse for an HSR, but this is not it.

@pony its possible (although not 100% ethical/legal) to intercept some older UK railway radio comms with scanners (and more recently) RTL-SDR equipment, and in some areas of UK collisions with cows were treated as a *much* bigger problem (full scale local emergency - (maybe due to smaller size of our country and higher speed trains). Not heard of as many lately; I think Network Rail and the farmers have worked together to reduce the risks caused by this..

@vfrmedia Maybe evacuating people from a stranded train if it was damaged and so on? It's really hard to see how a cow could cause massive damage even in relatively higher speed.

@pony yeah its mostly the impact of evacuation procedures etc as you've got other 200 km/h trains nearby and the incidents happen in remote areas where the emergency services are already under heavy pressure from motor accidents, hospitals full up with long term elderly patients, and not many places for sheltering people (that do not cost money to hire). Because of this it doesn't take a lot to cause a major incident in the UK!

@vfrmedia I don't think it's that terrible, unless it's a really bad place. Back when most trains had no central locking and anything, people here usually just "evacuated" themselves. It's now treated little bit more seriously now, I even saw a tiny bridge the firemen have for moving into a train on the other track.

@pony from what I remember most of the "cow strikes" happened in remote areas of Western England on the 200 km/h lines linking London and the West. As they had fairly modern mobile comms by the 2000s (trunked analogue radio system, this time not on FM broadcast band frequencies!) It wasn't as much a real danger to the passengers or railway staff but the remoteness of where the evacuated passengers ended up and uncertainty that everyone was safe.

@vfrmedia Well, it's still game over for the cow anyhow, so if we want to enable migration of larger animals, the price of crossings is kind of necessary to pay I imagine...

@pony I think the largest animal that currently could be encountered in the UK near railway lines *is* the Scottish Highland Cow, those are mostly confined to Scotland (or in specialist herds/collections) and classed as valuable so every precaution possible is taken to keep them off the tracks.

AFAIK Network Rail now have to account for human and non humans safety at railway crossings anyway as part of some EU ruling..