A WEBSITE designed by a trainee pilot which could save motorists hours of waiting at two level crossings is starting to take off.

Driving along Station Road in Petersfield or Liss can be a frustrating experience if you don’t know when the gates are down.

But it’s not a problem for Mark Lapecki as his simple but impressive www.crossingdropping.co.uk website tells drivers to the second when the gates will rise and fall, as it uses real time data from Network Rail.

“It can be quite annoying waiting at the Station Road crossing in Liss because they can be down to ten or 15 minutes, especially if you’ve got three trains running,” said the 41-year-old.

“If you’re on the west side and need to go to Tesco it’s often a case of ‘do I go down Station Road or around Andlers Ash?’ so this webpage helps enormously.”

“The data you get from National Railways is fairly complicated and there’s a lot of it, so it’s a case of working through it.

“It tells you where the trains are along the line and what colours the signals are, so you just have to figure when the gates are down.”

The first version focused solely on the Liss crossing but the website could be expanded to include other points on the Portsmouth to Waterloo line and beyond.