KEY POINTS:
Ontrack insists it will not install barrier arms at a level crossing where a Bay of Plenty brother and sister were killed on Tuesday.
The community at Maketu, where Ryan and Keeley Jamieson lived, is calling for barrier arms to be installed and for changes to be made
to the intersection by the crossing.
The pair died when their car was hit by a train on the Maketu Rd crossing, just off State Highway 2.
Witnesses said the car ignored warning lights and bells signalling that a train was approaching.
The crossing lies east of the highway and metres from the intersection of Maketu and Te Tumu Rds.
Another road is directly opposite, on the western side of State Highway 2.
Maketu chief fire officer Shane Beech said 12 crashes had occurred at the crossroads in the past year and changes to the intersection, including barrier arms across the rail line, were needed.
"It's just a real black spot," he said.
Jamieson family spokeswoman Penni Gibson also said the lack of barrier arms was a potential problem.
"If that's a contributing factor [to crashes] and the barriers can assist in relieving that, then surely that would be the way to go."
But Ontrack said barrier arms were unlikely to be installed because the crossing had less than half the road traffic required to make it a candidate for upgrading.
Spokesman Kevin Ramshaw said the number of trains, cars and other "extraneous factors" were taken into consideration in upgrades.
Those factors could include whether people had died at a crossing.
"Obviously, it concerns us greatly when somebody is killed at a level crossing. We then have a look at the circumstances of those deaths."
Mr Ramshaw said although Ontrack had great sympathy for the Jamieson family, barrier arms might not have prevented their children's deaths because they already appeared to have ignored the crossing's lights and bells.
In the last fatal crash at the crossing, in 2001, a 26-year-old man drove around a car that had stopped for the warning lights and bells.
Transit is also unlikely to make major changes to the road layout, saying the complexity of the intersection limited what it could do.
The Jamiesons' bodies were returned to their mother's home yesterday afternoon and they will be farewelled at a service tomorrow.
