How many people do you think this is each day? If it’s 1,000 (train runs through busy areas, but most people don’t cross tracks illegally) then the annual cost is ~3.7M minutes.
The the average person killed by a train would have had maybe another ~12M waking minutes [1], so fences that prevented even a death every three years would do more good than harm. And the number of tracks-crossers would have to be super high for fencing not to be worth it.
(But adding signaled crossings or overpasses could be worth it!)
[1] 60 min / hr * 16 waking hr / day * 365 day / year * 35 years
How many people do you think this is each day? If it’s 1,000 (train runs through busy areas, but most people don’t cross tracks illegally) then the annual cost is ~3.7M minutes.
The the average person killed by a train would have had maybe another ~12M waking minutes [1], so fences that prevented even a death every three years would do more good than harm. And the number of tracks-crossers would have to be super high for fencing not to be worth it.
(But adding signaled crossings or overpasses could be worth it!)
[1] 60 min / hr * 16 waking hr / day * 365 day / year * 35 years