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New river level displays on the Severn.


MoominPapa

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CRT have installed the new-style water level displays on all the Severn locks. These are in use in other places too (by the top lock at Hanbury on the Droitwich and by Isis lock in  Oxford, to name two I've seen) and are generally fairly effective. On the Severn they're useless and potentially confusing.

 

For those who have not seen them, the boards are about a metre square, and have two vertical columns of high-intensity LEDs, red, yellow and green. The two columns are within a few cm of each other and  refer to two locations. Along the bottom of the board is a schematic map of where these locations are. If you're standing in front of the display, it's very informative.

 

At the Severn locks, they've installed them on the high lock wing walls, facing upstream and down. next to the traffic light controlled by the lock keeper. They are therefore high in the air and a long way away from occupants of boats on closest approach. It's impossible to read anything on the sign, including  the map showing where the displays apply, and even if you assume that the two points are above and below the lock, if the two are showing different colours, it's pretty difficult to see which colour is which. The LEDS flash on and off, probably to save power as the electronics are solar, so you don't necessarily see both lights at the same time, to have  even a chance to distinguish the left column from the right. The lights are also next to the traffic lights, so it's now necessary to look carefully to distinguish a green light for green boards from a green light for "enter the lock". In the dark or in fog it might be sufficiently difficult that unfortunate mistakes are made and an accident ensues.

 

These boards would be much better installed on the lock landing pontoons.. Boats could approach them much more closely and if necessary stop. The confusion with the traffic lights would be avoided. It's difficult to believe that no-one spotted this problem, but either they didn't or CRTs organisation is sufficiently broken that the mistake was made anyway.

 

On a more general winge, CRT signage that may need to be read from a passing boat is always done in too small a font size. A font suitable to be read by a pedestrian on the towpath is too  small to be easily read from a passing boat.

 

MP.

 

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8 minutes ago, MoominPapa said:

CRT have installed the new-style water level displays on all the Severn locks. These are in use in other places too (by the top lock at Hanbury on the Droitwich and by Isis lock in  Oxford, to name two I've seen) and are generally fairly effective. On the Severn they're useless and potentially confusing.

 

Notwithstanding your points about readability, the thing about the Hanbury one is that you can read it before you head towards where there may be issues (in that case the Salwarpe and the Severn). Surely by the time you're entering a Severn lock it's all a bit late anyway?

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6 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Notwithstanding your points about readability, the thing about the Hanbury one is that you can read it before you head towards where there may be issues (in that case the Salwarpe and the Severn). Surely by the time you're entering a Severn lock it's all a bit late anyway?

There are circumstances where it might be useful: if conditions have changed simce you entered the river, or where conditions vary above and below the lock. Nothing that the lock keeper couldn't tell you though.

 

MP.

 

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11 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Do you not have a pair of binoculars? We read the Severn signs with ours:closedeyes:. Having said that we'd already checked the conditions elsewhere so we already knew what they were saying anyway

Yes, but I'd bet most narrowboats don't.

 

MP.

7 minutes ago, Horace42 said:

Not being a regular user, what do the signs tell you, that you really need to know about?

How did you manage before the signs were installed?

 

They have four possible states for each of the two reported locations. Red - danger. Yellow and falling, Yellow and rising, Green - no danger. The alternative to the signs is a coloured strip on a wall in the water. The isgns give you extra information in yellow - if the level is going up or down, and tell you about locations remote to where you are now.

 

MP.

 

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The locky at Gloucester, when asked why the one facing the docks was displaying yellow-falling for the Gloucester-Upper Lode section said "It has a mind of its own" which would imply that he, at least had no input to it.

 

MP

 

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3 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

That tells me that they do it - but where is it?!

For the river Severn you will find them here ( https://www.riverlevels.uk/river-severn-tewkesbury-mythe-bridge#.W4hkZ7gnbIU  ) Mythe Bridge given as an example but you can click on other locations on the page. If you then head off up the Avon, the levels can be found here ( https://www.avonnavigationtrust.org/index.php?id=15  )

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