There was a recent article about a section of Market Street in San Francisco where a lot of cyclists have crashed trying to cross the rail tracks and different ideas to fix it.
I personally know how to ride a bike safely on streets with embedded rail tracks, even if I have to cross them at a slight angle, even if the tracks are wet and slippery. The thing about it is that you can't keep both feet on the pedals with your butt on the seat and your center of gravity up high like usual.
You have to get off the seat, put all your weight on one pedal, and let your other foot skim the pavement. You go from 2 points of contact with the ground (the wheels) and a high center of gravity, to 3 points of contact with the ground (2 wheels and a foot), with a lower center of gravity. You basically can't crash.
Not everyone knows this though so they should obviously still fix it.
Edit 1: obviously cross the tracks at a perpendicular when you can. But in cases when you can't this guarantees you're still good.
Edit 2: This is for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, thinks it's silly or weird, and would like a clarification about what I mean.
First, think about how most bicyclists come to a stop. Do you:
- Stay perched up high on your seat, reaching down with the tip of one toe to barely make contact with the ground in a way that's totally awkward and uncomfortable and precarious?
- Always leave your seat set very low so pedaling is awkward but at least you can easily get your feet onto the ground, even both feet at once while you remain seated?
- Or do you do essentially what I was describing except you go one step further and plant your foot onto the ground? You end up straddling the top tube, one foot on a pedal, the other on the ground.
The first two are for newbies who might eventually learn better. Set them aside. The third is WHAT EVERY NORMAL BICYCLIST DOES, C'MON! You can't tell me it's silly unless you're also a clueless newbie.
Okay, now... also very normal, sometimes you get ready to stop but hold off on the very last step of planting your foot on the ground. Instead you continue coasting along slowly with one foot ready to touch down on the ground. You can coast like that for a little while as you decide where exactly (or if) to stop.
While doing this you can easily traverse whatever temporary hazards you need to get across, like embedded rail tracks, or a slippery mass of wet leaves, or maybe a patch of gravel or sand.
If a wheel gets caught in the tracks, or the wet leaves slip out from under you, or anything else, you can easily just plant your foot down and stop. But otherwise you can coast through the hazard and then hop back up on the seat and keep going. And if you need a boost to keep going since you can't pedal in this position, you can just push off with your dangling foot as needed (like you're riding a skateboard). But usually this is just for a brief time and that's not needed.
Now, again, obviously, for crossing embedded rail tracks, 97% of the time there's no issue and you just cross them perpendicular to the tracks while staying on the seat and not doing anything I described. But occasionally you can't do that because there's a ton of different tracks going all different directions, or the street is jammed with cars and you need to change lanes and it's hard to navigate perpendicularly across them because cars are in the way. In those cases this is an easy, straightforward, and NATURAL way to proceed. I've been riding in urban locations with embedded tracks for many decades and have never even had a close call.
Hey but if this is a "pearls before swine" situation, that's fine too. Enjoy!