What if there is an epidemic, like during a major world/economic shock, more bankruptcies, house market crash, etc. Suicide rate doubles (from very rare to less rare). In the RER era, of course. Some potential efficiencies I can see:
- Cameras on the locomotive, forward, sideways, and back-facing (on little bumps). If that is something train drivers are comfortable with. This provides the video surveillance needed, to reduce investigation time.
- A better database of multiple coroners. Often, the favoured or nearest coronor isn't necessarily the one able to reach the site fastest. Build a database of all of them along a transit route, and get two enroute concurrently. Pay all of them, but the first one that shows, does the gruesome work.
- Site access sped up with a site acess plan, like more vans or pickup trucks with deployable railwheels, stationed at strategic points along the route. Less back and fourth time trying to get access. This is for making other purposes such as maintenance and fixing switches more efficient too, so this expense would not just be for this situation.
- Improved dispatching system (if needed) for the replacement crew integrated with dispatch for coronor, as they may need to ride in via the same access if it is found more efficient; It is a real technology endeavour, Coronor Dispatch Systems actually exist and they are always being improved on (e.g.
this powerpoint)
- More trespassing protection. There has historically been clusters of problem areas - partly because of larger number of grade crossings
- Retrospective analysis for each incident. Find the weak links. Get Metrolinx to research what the police appreciates, e.g. Less waiting for coronor, or easier access, etc. See what tweaks
With various combinations above, the bottleneck will usually simply be train crew replacement (a logistics that Metrolinx can more control themselves). Save an hour or two total, which can affect 50,000 people in transit during peak hour on one line.
It may not be needed now but the low lying apples like locomotive cams, need to be looked into. Car dash cams cost only 50 bucks, begin with a couple of those from the window, and later expand to a higher end system that mounts on the outside.
