Behavioural interventions to prevent trespass and vandalism: Lessons learned from the RESTRAIL and GRAFFOLUTION research projects

Problem area and challenges: Trespassing behaviour is a key problem for railway management because it leads to train-pedestrian collisions with severe consequences both for the victims and the railway operators. Trespassing... [ view full abstract ]

Problem area and challenges: Trespassing behaviour is a key problem for railway management because it leads to train-pedestrian collisions with severe consequences both for the victims and the railway operators. Trespassing accidents result from the violation of the safety rules by pedestrians. In many cases this intentional and risky behaviour is driven by vandalism intentions. Various measures have been proposed and used to reduce trespass and vandalism on railway premises, but to date there is no publication to show which of these measures are more effective.

Objective: This paper aims to review the good practices and recommendations on the prevention of railway trespass and vandalism and to provide a summary of the most promising preventive measures which involve organisational and human factors: collaborative measures, enforcement, staff training, public education, and environmental measures which are likely to influence people's behaviour. Physical measures (e.g. fencing) and purely technical ones (e.g. detection systems) are not within the scope of this paper, since there is consistent literature indication the effectiveness of these interventions.

The approach taken: The method included a systematic review of the literature on the topic of railway trespass and vandalism (original published articles and research reports), as well as a collection of prevention practices from actual railway undertakings and infrastructure managers. Both procedures were conducted during RESTRAIL and GRAFFOLUTION projects. On the one hand, the completed RESTRAIL project aimed to help reduce railway suicides and trespassing fatalities as well as the costly service disruption caused by these events by providing the rail industry and researchers worldwide with an analysis and identification of the most cost-effective measures. On the other hand, the ongoing GRAFFOLUTION project intends to enforce fundamental research studies on graffiti vandalism in public areas and transportation networks, towards the identification of relevant stakeholders, roles and processes in order to provide an open Information Hub adopting social media technologies to increase awareness among sprayers and citizens.

Findings: The final results of RESTRAIL and the ongoing studies conducted in GRAFFOLUTION revealed promising measures but very few studies which brought evidence for the effectiveness of measures against trespass and vandalism. Most publications and railway stakeholders made general recommendations concerning the implementation of measures. The discussion is focussed on (a) the combination of measures in order to reinforce the effect on behaviour, (b) the efficiency of measures on in different contexts (tresspass and vandalism), (c) the need for a behavioural theoretical framework applied to rail context, and (d) the continuous collection of best practice and study results in a toolbox for decision-makers.

Keywords: railway trespass; vandalism; graffiti; prevention; effective measures.

Note: We would like this paper to be considered for inclusion in the special edition of the Journal of Rapid Rail and Transit, in addition to being published in the electronic book of conference proceedings.