Research Helps Keep Rail Crossing Safety on the Right Track

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Howdy everyone, welcome to Thinking Transportation.
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Conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another.
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I'm Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
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During the NFL season, I feel for the defense of any team playing the Baltimore Ravens as they have to try to bring down the Ravens running back, Derrick Henry.
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Mr.
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Henry is about my size, 6'2", 250.
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He's a lot more solid, a lot faster and stronger, and he is really hard to stop.
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Today we're going to be talking about something else that's hard to stop.
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An average freight train in Texas carries about 4,000 tons of cargo.
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And when it is traveling at 55 miles an hour, it takes about a mile to come to a stop, roughly the length of 18 football fields.
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That's why my colleagues at TTI have studied ways of increasing driver safety at highway rail grade crossings, the subject of our episode today.
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So today I have the pleasure of talking with one of my TTI colleagues who specializes in rail grade crossing safety.
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Jeff Warner is the Multimodal Freight Program Manager in the same freight and trade division that I'm a part of.
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Jeff, welcome to Thinking Transportation.
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Thanks, Allan.
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I appreciate the opportunity.
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Now, one of the very cool things about working at TTI is the chance to work with so many smart people with very different backgrounds.
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Jeff, explain a little bit about your journey and how it brought you to transportation and to TTI.
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Well, I feel like it's less of a journey and more of a story of luck.
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I came to Texas A&M as an engineering student and was able to get a student position at TTI as part of the rail research program.
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And when it came time to graduate, the program had lost a couple of researchers, so they asked if I wanted to stay full-time.
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So I was able to come to A&M as a student and then stay full-time as a researcher at TTI.
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And have been here ever since.
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Yeah, I don't know that my wife thought that was going to be the plan, but it's really worked out for both of us here.
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So earlier this month, you and I were in Atlanta, Georgia, along with about 300 other rail safety professionals at the National Rail Crossing Safety Conference.
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First, tell our listeners exactly what is a highway rail- grade crossing, or as referred to internationally as a level crossing.
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What are we talking about?
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Well, at a basic level, a highway rail- grade crossing is a location where the roadway intersects with the rail lines.
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I believe there's currently about 200,000 of those in the U.S.
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at this point.
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And where we are in Texas, there's about 15,000 at-grade crossings.
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That's one of the places where a road you're driving and you're going to cross over the rail tracks and bump over, and hopefully nobody gets in the way of each other.
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Exactly.
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I think most of us are crossing grade crossings on a regular basis, and you cross them all the time without incident, thankfully, and you may not even realize you're doing it.
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Given that familiarity, what are some of the reasons these grade crossings are so dangerous for people and for drivers?
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I like to point out that a lot of research, a lot of effort is spent trying to determine where the safety problems exist.
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For our colleagues that deal with safety on roadways, they spend a lot of effort trying to determine where those safety locations are.
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But for grade crossings, we know where that safety problem is.
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It's at the crossing there where the rail crosses the roadway.
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Yeah, crashes are still happening.
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There's a number of factors that make grade crossings dangerous.
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First is that trains are big and they take a long time to stop.
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You know, if there's a vehicle stuck on the tracks or if there's an issue, the train will not be able to stop in time.
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Additionally, some crossings see thousands of vehicles crossing the rail tracks every day, and those vehicles all come in different shapes and sizes.
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Finally, driver behavior is a significant contributing factor.
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Too many of the crashes occur because drivers ignore or bypass the safety measures at grade crossings.
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So one of the ways our traffic safety colleagues refer to means of mitigating safety risks is to refer to the three E's: engineering, education, and enforcement.
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Let's talk a little bit about that engineering, or the infrastructure side of things.
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What are some of the things that can be done at the physical intersection of roads and railroad tracks to improve safety?
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There's a long history of improving safety at grade crossings through the implementation of traffic control devices.
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Active traffic control devices such as flashing lights and gates are widely used.
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And you'll particularly see those at those crossings where there's lots of vehicles and multiple lanes.
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You also are seeing more devices being added to sidewalks and dedicated pathways for pedestrians and bicyclists as well.
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So as I understand it-- I'm not an electrician or a traffic signal train control guy-- but as the train approaches that grade crossing, there's something about an electrical circuit that's created with the wheel, the rail, and a box that's over at the side of that crossing, the bungalow, that detects that the train is nearing the crossing.
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That's what creates the gates and lights to go off.
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Am I correct?
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Is that kind of how it works?
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That's basically it, Allan.
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What we see is as the train approaches and they trigger that mechanism, there are some timings that allow for constant warning for those gates to come down, give the drivers a consistent message as they are approaching the grade crossing and seeing those warning devices.
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So it gives a little bit of advanced time for the bells and lights to go off, the gate to come down at least a couple of seconds before the train arrives.
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That's right.
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And also these signals can be interconnected with the nearby traffic signals to allow for the traffic signal to clear those vehicles off the crossing ahead of time as well.
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Yeah, that's certainly the case given how many roadways were constructed next to railroad rights of way, given that that was a nice straight linear corridor.
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So that when you have a road crossing that intersects with one of those parallel roadways, there's not a whole lot of room between the rail and that intersecting road.
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So that's one of the reasons why that traffic signal needs to be connected to the grade crossing so that any cars that are waiting can get out of the way.
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So not every complicated crossing issue can be solved with a grade separation, in large part because those are expensive and they take up a lot of right of way. What are some of the technologies that were showcased in presentations and exhibits at the conference last week that add visibility to crossings?
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Yeah, I felt like technology was really showcased at the conference last week.
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We had multiple vendors there that had different solutions that they were offering.
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What we're seeing, I think, is a maturing of this technology.
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We're seeing it being applied out in the field, and that technology is going to be used to improve safety and mobility of the public.
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Some of that technology is used to detect trains as they are approaching or at grade crossings, and that can then be conveyed to the drivers ahead of time so that those drivers can choose alternate routes, which is a mobility improvement.
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When I started at TTI 30 years ago, TTI was looking at some of this technology too.
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So it's been a longstanding approach to improving safety at crossings, but I think what we're seeing now is the maturing of that technology.
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Yeah, you had mentioned TTI's involvement in this.
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As I remember, some of our guys were using side firing radar to detect a train at a crossing and using that as a sort of proxy of whether the gates and everything had been engaged and activated there.
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I think we did something for the city of Sugarland for their first responder dispatching so that they would know when Glidden subdivision of Union Pacific trains were coming by and make sure that they could find alternate routes to respond to fire or police events on the other side of town.
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Today, one of the things that strikes me is there's so many more types of sensors, acoustic, to listen to the train wheels as they're going by.
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Trains are not incredibly quiet, particularly the closer you get to them.
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LIDAR is something that I think TTI is now using and a lot of other systems are.
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And then there's cameras that can detect physical presence.
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And then machine learning to look at the video to determine whether there are objects in the pathway.
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All of that stuff is being powered with less power.
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They're smaller, they're cheaper, they can be posted outside the railroad right away so that you don't need rail permission to put something like that in.
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So there's just a whole lot more variety of technologies that can be applied.
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And then if you do that in connection, one crossing after another, you can start gaining some intelligence about how long is that train, how fast is it going, how likely is it to be that the next crossing down the corridor is likely to be blocked at the same time.
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So there's an awful lot of technology that's being advanced, in large part because, as you mentioned, that maturing of the sensors themselves.
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Yeah, and I think using those sensors, especially is data.
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Not only does it provide an immediate way of providing information to drivers and those first responders, but it's also data that is collected over time to better understand how the traveling public is being impacted, and they can use that data in their decision making in the future.
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So let's shift a little bit to the second of our three E's, education.
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At the conference, we heard from the folks at Operation Lifesaver and from Florida Department of Transportation's Rail Safety Coalition on programs and volunteers that share a rail safety message.
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What can you tell our listeners about some of these programs?
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Education is certainly a very component of grade crossing safety; Operation Lifesaver in coordination with their state coordinators.
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And honestly, they have a small army of volunteers out giving presentations every day.
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These are very important activities and really improves safety throughout the whole country.
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Operation Lifesaver in particular has two major programs that the public should see every year.
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The first of those is related to the emergency notification sign.
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That is the ENS sign is located at every grade crossing and provides a toll-free number.
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So if there's an emergency, drivers can call that number, get you directly to the railroad, and can hopefully get them to stop trains before there's a major incident.
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Better understanding is needed by the public of that sign.
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It's a relatively new sign, and people don't always know that it's there and how you could use it.
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The second is a full week worth of education material distributed to the public.
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And that campaign is the See Tracks?
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Think Train! campaign.
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So a whole week of distributing highly beneficial information out to the public to alert them of grade crossing safety, trespasser safety, and that is a US- wide event.
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You mentioned those ENS signs, the little blue signs by each grade crossing.
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If for some reason a driver finds themselves stuck on the tracks inside of a gate or with a gate on its vehicle, what should they be doing once that happens?
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I don't think anybody realizes they're going to ever get stuck on the train track.
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And so this is a very stressful situation, very concerning to those users.
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We need the drivers and the occupants of those cars to exit the vehicle as soon as they can, move away from the tracks, find that ES sign.
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And on that ENS sign, that provides the name of the railroad, it provides that toll-free number that goes directly to the railroad and provides a unique identification number for that specific grade crossing.
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That's very important.
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So we need the drivers and everybody clear of the track for their safety and then to find that ENS sign and contact the railroad directly.
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That will be the fastest way to get warning out to the train crews to stop the trains.
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That's certainly the case.
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We've seen a number of grade crossing incidents where a large oversized vehicle gets hung up on the tracks, and for 20 or 30 minutes they're all working on it, trying to get it to move.
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And at some point at the beginning of that process, somebody should have found that ENS sign and called somebody because that amount of time is plenty of time to notify the train crews to stop.
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So this ENS sign campaign is really, really important for all kinds of different users.
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Time is precious, and we should always expect to train.
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So it's important to identify that sign and call the railroad as soon as possible.
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So our third E is enforcement.
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Signs and warning gates at grade crossings are more than just helpful suggestions or information.
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There's more to it than that.
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Absolutely.
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You know, drivers are legally obligated to obey traffic control devices throughout the roadway network, and grade crossings are certainly no different.
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It's very unsafe and dangerous to ignore the instructions provided by those signs and signals that are offered to the public.
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So it's important to have enforcement so that the laws are followed and that we reduce unsafe behaviors.
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Yeah, it's really astonishing how many grade crossing crashes, fatalities, and injuries happen where people drive around the lights and gates.
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But because that crossing has been activated, that's more than likely a train, if it's not there, it's coming.
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So that gate is there for your protection.
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Unfortunately, we see lots and lots of incidents where crashes happen, where the hundreds of thousands of dollars have been invested to put that active protection device already there.
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So we've talked some about vehicles at grade crossings.
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We've also talked about safety risks associated with people walking across the tracks at the crossings or somewhere else.
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Rail safety folks refer to these people as trespassers, which we might refer to as pedestrians.
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Why is that?
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What's that name about?
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Yeah, trespassing has been a long-standing, tricky problem for the railroads and the public themselves.
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So a trespasser is someone who is not supposed to be on the rail right- of- way.
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The rail right-of-way is privately owned by the railroad and is not to be utilized by the public.
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Often we see people using it for shortcuts or even recreation, such as riding their four-wheelers or snowmobiles.
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And that is not an allowable use of that right-of-way.
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So you've led some national research projects on trespassing mitigation.
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What are some of the strategies for reducing some of these pedestrian or trespasser incidents?
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Yeah, when you think about a trespasser incident, the people have no protection.
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So those incidents are usually going to be fatal.
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The trains are very big, usually traveling very fast.
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And so it's a very challenging situation to eliminate those problems.
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But the approach to mitigate trespassing on rail rights of way, it usually involves a number of approaches similar to the grade crossing with the three E's.
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You could apply that same approach to trespassing as well.
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Engineering approaches could be something like applying fences.
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Education is even more important potentially than grade crossings for those people that are on the right-of-way.
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It could just be that they don't know that they're not supposed to be there.
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So let's get that information out to them.
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And enforcement is also critical for trespassing.
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Now, one of the things that we heard last week was a slogan that was shared by a lot of people that said the safest crossing is one that's not there.
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That's either removed or it's closed.
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What are some of the approaches that can replace or close those current grade crossings?
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What can be done?
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Oftentimes, especially in an urban area, you'll have a series of grade crossings along a corridor.
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Looking at that entire corridor to maybe find the major roadway that could be grade separated.
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That grade separation on a major roadway would improve mobility and, of course, improve safety with the elimination of the grade crossing.
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But the implementation and construction of that grade separation could also then allow for some of those lesser crossings, those crossings that have a limited amount of traffic over them nearby to be closed.
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And by closing them, the traveling public could travel a short distance over that grade separation and cross the rail line there at a safe location.
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So one of the things we rail safety guys refer to, that grade separation, basically that's the literal way of referring to the difference between the grade where the rail track is and a vertical difference of the roadway going over it.
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It's a bridge, basically.
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One of the interesting things that's happened in the past 12 months is that the Texas Legislature has created a funding program for grade separations-- $250 million that the Texas Department of Transportation has to give to folks to encourage or leverage some of that money to go toward those new bridges or overpasses to get people across the railroad track without that dangerous grade crossing.
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We've seen about $160 million worth of awards already being made earlier this year.
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And we're waiting for some news from the Federal Railroad Administration's funding programs to perhaps leverage additional state dollars toward a lot more grade separations.
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Those grade separations are fairly expensive, right?
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They are very expensive.
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And having a dedicated program is going to really improve the number of grade separations we can do around the state.
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We also talked about technology earlier.
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So I think one of the things about technology could be that we can improve safety and mobility using technology without the need for an expensive grade separation, at least for now, perhaps sometime delay that construction need for sometime in the future.
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Yeah, not every grade crossing is going to be easy to grade separate.
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Those things, like I said, they're $30 to $40 to $50 million, depending on the geometry and what the land looks like.
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They can also require additional right-of-way, which if you're in the middle of a city with a narrow street and a narrow railroadway, that's just not going to make sense.
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But to the extent that you can equip some of these crossings with some of those monitoring systems, that allows people to know that there's a crossing that's engaged or that there's a train present and it makes sense to go to where either a grade separation is available or to go around where the crossing isn't being blocked at all.
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One of the things we heard from David Fink, the current administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, was that when it comes to fatalities and injuries that the FRA keeps track of, the number of railroad employee fatalities and railroad passenger fatalities and injuries is really pretty low.
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Instead, what are the two larger sets of fatalities and injuries that the FRA keeps track of?
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Yeah, that was great to hear and really a testament to everybody focused on rail safety throughout the industry, such as the railroad, the FRA, and those other partners.
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But what we're really seeing in the data is that grade crossing and trespassing incidents, fatalities are really the two largest sets of fatalities and injuries in the industry currently.
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We've been touting for a number of years the dramatic decrease in grade crossing fatalities and injuries over the past 50 years.
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But the reality is, recent trends are heading in a troubling direction with the last five plus years increasing in fatalities and injuries.
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And that's certainly the case for trespassing.
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Trespasser fatalities are on an incline, which drives that total number up.
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Let me shift a little bit.
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One of the special things that happened at the conference was the awarding of the conference's Career Achievement Award, which is named after Hoy A.
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Richards, who was from TTI originally.
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This year, that conference executive committee selected you for this award.
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Tell our listeners about that and what the award means to you.
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That was a tremendous honor.
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That was completely unexpected.
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I was completely surprised and receiving the award in front of a large group of rail safety experts that are dedicated to saving lives was a tremendous honor.
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I think winning the award reflects an understanding of how important research can be to improving safety at grade crossings along rights of way.
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The previous winners have all been real champions of grave crossing safety, so to be recognized with them is just tremendously unbelievable.
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I'm just glad that I've been able to contribute to rail safety enough to be recognized by this organization.
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So now, Mr.
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Richards was a former student of Texas A&M with degrees in both engineering and economics.
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In addition to hosting the first rail crossing safety conference back in 1969, Hoy was also instrumental in developing national standards for grade crossing inventories and in developing grade crossing risk prioritization formulas.
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First, tell us a little bit about the inventory.
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What do we mean by a grade crossing inventory and why is that information important?
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I think I mentioned earlier that there's over 200,000 grade crossings in the U.S.
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Over the 50 plus years that the inventory and the dedicated funding from the federal government has been in place, we have seen a dramatic reduction in that number.
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But we need to understand where to address safety.
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And that starts with understanding the characteristics of the grade crossings themselves, finding those locations that had the highest volumes of both vehicles and trains, finding those locations that had the highest risk of some sort of incident occurring.
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So when we have done our grade crossing safety analysis, some of the information that's included in that inventory has to do with, as you mentioned, how many vehicles, how many trains, how fast the trains are going.
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It also has to do with how close is that grade crossing to another intersection.
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How much distance to another intersection likely mean that you've got a traffic signal involved, or the shorter the distance, the less space you have for vehicles to store between the traffic signal and the grade crossing.
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That inventory is a rich source of information for identifying which crossings are more risky than others.
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Yeah, I think the states are really interested in making data-driven decisions, and having the inventory allows that to happen.
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It's a very critical first component of that decision making.
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Having clear, updated data provided by both the railroad and the states themselves offers them that opportunity to fully understand what is happening at the grade crossing, what's out in out at the grade crossing as far as treatments and identifying those grade crossings that pose the greatest risk.
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So with that information in hand, one of the other things Mr.
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Richards did was help advance and create prioritization formulas, which use that information from the inventory about the various data sets and then put that together in a way that assigns or estimates risks of incidents and then measures relative risks across crossings.
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You've been involved in creating some of those formulas.
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We promised this podcast will not involve math, but what are some of the ways that those formulas use some of that inventory information to determine risks?
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Yeah, the inventory data is going to be the primary source of the data that feeds into those indices or equations.
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Every state does it a little bit different.
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There are some federal resources and equations that the states can use, but each state is going to have some sort of mechanism that they can compare the grade crossings against each other.
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And the data that we talked about for the inventory plays a major role in that.
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Building on Mr.
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Richards' work on inventories and prioritization is how to apply some of these federal dollars to crossing by crossing improvements and then measuring what difference happens at those crossings.
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A couple of decades ago, after a particularly bad grid crossing crash involving an Amtrak train in Nevada, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended something that the Department of Transportation's Inspector General had been talking about for a while, which is thinking about grade crossing safety in a broader context, not simply about crossing by crossing, but what are the bigger trends that are happening, particularly in light of so many grade crossing fatalities happening at locations that already had active devices.
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And so one of the things that the NTSB recommended was that the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Highway work with states to come up with what they called a state action plan, a broader assessment of what's the data showing it is a problem in each of these states, and then what are the highest risk crossings in those states, and then what are some programs to address some of that.
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Initially, I think this is back in 2008, Congress directed that the 10 states with the highest number of grade crossing fatalities are the first ones to prepare those state action plans.
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That included Texas, given that we, in addition to having the most grade crossings in the country, we have the most grade crossing fatalities.
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After those first rounds of state action plans were done, Federal Highway worked with us to prepare a report on how to develop a model state action plan for everybody else if that were to happen, and then what were noteworthy practices to use in addressing some of these grade crossing issues.
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Jeff, talk a little bit about what are the differences between a crossing by crossing approach and that state action plan.
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How does looking at a higher level of data and risk help states to maybe address things that they might not see on a crossing-by-crossing basis?
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Well, we talked about the fact that each state is looking at each crossing, comparing against each crossing, but this recognizes that there needs to be a little bit of a holistic approach when looking at the entire state.
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Each state is responsible for creating their own state action plan.
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Each state has their unique set of safety issues that they are trying to address.
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And this allows each state to take ownership of the safety at grade crossings and come up with those dedicated actions that can be implemented to improve safety.
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As we mentioned, those safety measures could be engineering, education, and enforcement.
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And by looking at that holistically, as you mentioned, the bigger context, it might help identify what could be done about crossings where you've already invested a couple hundred thousand dollars to put in lights and gates, but people are still being killed and injured there.
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It might take either a grade separation or some additional pavement markings or signs to help make that more visible to the driver.
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It could also be a lead to the sort of corridor approach that you had talked about let's think about how to improve a number of crossings along a single line of track so that total numbers of safety outcomes across that corridor could be addressed with a couple of investments and maybe some closures.
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We had talked about how back in 2008, the first 10 states were identified to put those action plans in place.
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Subsequently, Congress directed every state to put one of these in place and asked those original 10 to redo their plans.
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We were fortunate enough to work with the rail division at the Texas Department of Transportation on their state action plan, updating some of that original data analysis that they had done, and then identifying which were their highest risk crossings.
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Not surprisingly, when TxDOT was awarding these first round of grade separation projects, one of those highest risk crossings, a confluence of three different roads in really weird angles in southeast Houston, that's going to be one of the locations for the first investments of these grade crossing formulas.
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So we can kind of see how an action plan level of assessment leads to investment in grade crossing protection that goes beyond lights and gates.
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Absolutely.
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One of the things I can tell from our conversation today is how much you've dedicated your time and your career to making a difference in grade crossing safety and making transportation better for drivers and communities.
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What are some of the reasons that motivate you to do what you do each day?
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The grade crossing research that we do is highly focused on safety.
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So it is easy to be motivated when you understand that the work that you're putting in could save lives.
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We've seen a reduction over 50 years of incidents, fatalities, and injuries.
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However, with the increase in those numbers in recent years, we know that our work is needed now more than ever.
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So the motivation is pretty easy.
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Put in the work, come up with the research, and come up with better solutions that we can improve safety and save lives.
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Once again, thanks, Jeff, for joining us and helping us understand this important safety issue, particularly in light of TTI's investment in it over time.
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Thanks for being with us.
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Thank you, Allan, for having me.
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I appreciate it.
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Let me close by repeating some important information Jeff shared with us today.
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If your car or truck is stuck on a train track, you need to get everyone out of your car without delay and walk away from the train tracks.
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Look for the blue sign on the pole with the crossbucks and flashing lights.
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That emergency notification sign has a phone number that you need to call and then tell them the crossing number listed on the sign.
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If you see a train approaching, walk well away from the tracks toward the train, because when that train hits your car, it will explode out in the direction the train is traveling.
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Always be safe around train tracks.
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Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard or learned something, please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe, and share this episode.
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I invite you to join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B.
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Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System.
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The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau.
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I'm your host, Allan Rutter.
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Thanks again for joining us.
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See you next time.