Latest / Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations / Research Helps Keep Rail Crossing Safety on the Right Track

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Research Helps Keep Rail Crossing Safety on the Right Track · Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations

• 0:14
  Allan Rutter: Howdy everyone, welcome to Thinking Transportation.
• 0:18
  Allan Rutter: Conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another.
• 0:23
  Allan Rutter: I'm Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
• 0:27
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 0:38
  Allan Rutter: Mr.
• 0:38
  Allan Rutter: Henry is about my size, 6'2", 250.
• 0:41
  Allan Rutter: He's a lot more solid, a lot faster and stronger, and he is really hard to stop.
• 0:47
  Allan Rutter: Today we're going to be talking about something else that's hard to stop.
• 0:51
  Allan Rutter: An average freight train in Texas carries about 4,000 tons of cargo.
• 0:56
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 1:05
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 1:16
  Allan Rutter: So today I have the pleasure of talking with one of my TTI colleagues who specializes in rail grade crossing safety.
• 1:23
  Allan Rutter: Jeff Warner is the Multimodal Freight Program Manager in the same freight and trade division that I'm a part of.
• 1:29
  Allan Rutter: Jeff, welcome to Thinking Transportation.
• 1:32
  Jeff Warner: Thanks, Allan.
• 1:33
  Jeff Warner: I appreciate the opportunity.
• 1:36
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 1:43
  Allan Rutter: Jeff, explain a little bit about your journey and how it brought you to transportation and to TTI.
• 1:51
  Jeff Warner: Well, I feel like it's less of a journey and more of a story of luck.
• 1:54
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 2:02
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 2:08
  Jeff Warner: So I was able to come to A&M as a student and then stay full-time as a researcher at TTI.
• 2:14
  Allan Rutter: And have been here ever since.
• 2:16
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 2:22
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 2:31
  Allan Rutter: First, tell our listeners exactly what is a highway rail- grade crossing, or as referred to internationally as a level crossing.
• 2:39
  Allan Rutter: What are we talking about?
• 2:41
  Jeff Warner: Well, at a basic level, a highway rail- grade crossing is a location where the roadway intersects with the rail lines.
• 2:48
  Jeff Warner: I believe there's currently about 200,000 of those in the U.S.
• 2:52
  Jeff Warner: at this point.
• 2:53
  Jeff Warner: And where we are in Texas, there's about 15,000 at-grade crossings.
• 2:57
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 3:06
  Jeff Warner: Exactly.
• 3:07
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 3:17
  Allan Rutter: Given that familiarity, what are some of the reasons these grade crossings are so dangerous for people and for drivers?
• 3:24
  Jeff Warner: I like to point out that a lot of research, a lot of effort is spent trying to determine where the safety problems exist.
• 3:30
  Jeff Warner: For our colleagues that deal with safety on roadways, they spend a lot of effort trying to determine where those safety locations are.
• 3:38
  Jeff Warner: But for grade crossings, we know where that safety problem is.
• 3:41
  Jeff Warner: It's at the crossing there where the rail crosses the roadway.
• 3:45
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, crashes are still happening.
• 3:47
  Jeff Warner: There's a number of factors that make grade crossings dangerous.
• 3:50
  Jeff Warner: First is that trains are big and they take a long time to stop.
• 3:53
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 3:59
  Jeff Warner: Additionally, some crossings see thousands of vehicles crossing the rail tracks every day, and those vehicles all come in different shapes and sizes.
• 4:05
  Jeff Warner: Finally, driver behavior is a significant contributing factor.
• 4:09
  Jeff Warner: Too many of the crashes occur because drivers ignore or bypass the safety measures at grade crossings.
• 4:15
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 4:28
  Allan Rutter: Let's talk a little bit about that engineering, or the infrastructure side of things.
• 4:32
  Allan Rutter: What are some of the things that can be done at the physical intersection of roads and railroad tracks to improve safety?
• 4:44
  Jeff Warner: There's a long history of improving safety at grade crossings through the implementation of traffic control devices.
• 4:50
  Jeff Warner: Active traffic control devices such as flashing lights and gates are widely used.
• 4:55
  Jeff Warner: And you'll particularly see those at those crossings where there's lots of vehicles and multiple lanes.
• 5:00
  Jeff Warner: You also are seeing more devices being added to sidewalks and dedicated pathways for pedestrians and bicyclists as well.
• 5:10
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 5:32
  Allan Rutter: That's what creates the gates and lights to go off.
• 5:36
  Allan Rutter: Am I correct?
• 5:37
  Allan Rutter: Is that kind of how it works?
• 5:39
  Jeff Warner: That's basically it, Allan.
• 5:41
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 5:58
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 6:07
  Jeff Warner: That's right.
• 6:07
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 6:18
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 6:28
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 6:39
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 6:49
  Allan Rutter: 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?
• 7:10
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, I felt like technology was really showcased at the conference last week.
• 7:14
  Jeff Warner: We had multiple vendors there that had different solutions that they were offering.
• 7:19
  Jeff Warner: What we're seeing, I think, is a maturing of this technology.
• 7:22
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 7:30
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 7:44
  Jeff Warner: When I started at TTI 30 years ago, TTI was looking at some of this technology too.
• 7:50
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 7:59
  Allan Rutter: Yeah, you had mentioned TTI's involvement in this.
• 8:02
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 8:17
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 8:34
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 8:44
  Allan Rutter: Trains are not incredibly quiet, particularly the closer you get to them.
• 8:48
  Allan Rutter: LIDAR is something that I think TTI is now using and a lot of other systems are.
• 8:53
  Allan Rutter: And then there's cameras that can detect physical presence.
• 8:57
  Allan Rutter: And then machine learning to look at the video to determine whether there are objects in the pathway.
• 9:03
  Allan Rutter: All of that stuff is being powered with less power.
• 9:06
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 9:16
  Allan Rutter: So there's just a whole lot more variety of technologies that can be applied.
• 9:21
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 9:37
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 9:46
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, and I think using those sensors, especially is data.
• 9:50
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 10:07
  Allan Rutter: So let's shift a little bit to the second of our three E's, education.
• 10:12
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 10:27
  Allan Rutter: What can you tell our listeners about some of these programs?
• 10:31
  Jeff Warner: Education is certainly a very component of grade crossing safety; Operation Lifesaver in coordination with their state coordinators.
• 10:39
  Jeff Warner: And honestly, they have a small army of volunteers out giving presentations every day.
• 10:44
  Jeff Warner: These are very important activities and really improves safety throughout the whole country.
• 10:50
  Jeff Warner: Operation Lifesaver in particular has two major programs that the public should see every year.
• 10:58
  Jeff Warner: The first of those is related to the emergency notification sign.
• 11:01
  Jeff Warner: That is the ENS sign is located at every grade crossing and provides a toll-free number.
• 11:09
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 11:18
  Jeff Warner: Better understanding is needed by the public of that sign.
• 11:21
  Jeff Warner: It's a relatively new sign, and people don't always know that it's there and how you could use it.
• 11:28
  Jeff Warner: The second is a full week worth of education material distributed to the public.
• 11:34
  Jeff Warner: And that campaign is the See Tracks?
• 11:37
  Jeff Warner: Think Train! campaign.
• 11:39
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 11:51
  Allan Rutter: You mentioned those ENS signs, the little blue signs by each grade crossing.
• 11:56
  Allan Rutter: 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?
• 12:07
  Jeff Warner: I don't think anybody realizes they're going to ever get stuck on the train track.
• 12:10
  Jeff Warner: And so this is a very stressful situation, very concerning to those users.
• 12:15
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 12:24
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 12:37
  Jeff Warner: That's very important.
• 12:38
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 12:47
  Jeff Warner: That will be the fastest way to get warning out to the train crews to stop the trains.
• 12:52
  Allan Rutter: That's certainly the case.
• 12:54
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 13:07
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 13:20
  Allan Rutter: So this ENS sign campaign is really, really important for all kinds of different users.
• 13:27
  Jeff Warner: Time is precious, and we should always expect to train.
• 13:30
  Jeff Warner: So it's important to identify that sign and call the railroad as soon as possible.
• 13:35
  Allan Rutter: So our third E is enforcement.
• 13:38
  Allan Rutter: Signs and warning gates at grade crossings are more than just helpful suggestions or information.
• 13:45
  Allan Rutter: There's more to it than that.
• 13:47
  Jeff Warner: Absolutely.
• 13:48
  Jeff Warner: You know, drivers are legally obligated to obey traffic control devices throughout the roadway network, and grade crossings are certainly no different.
• 13:55
  Jeff Warner: It's very unsafe and dangerous to ignore the instructions provided by those signs and signals that are offered to the public.
• 14:02
  Jeff Warner: So it's important to have enforcement so that the laws are followed and that we reduce unsafe behaviors.
• 14:08
  Allan Rutter: Yeah, it's really astonishing how many grade crossing crashes, fatalities, and injuries happen where people drive around the lights and gates.
• 14:19
  Allan Rutter: But because that crossing has been activated, that's more than likely a train, if it's not there, it's coming.
• 14:36
  Allan Rutter: So that gate is there for your protection.
• 14:39
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 14:50
  Allan Rutter: So we've talked some about vehicles at grade crossings.
• 14:54
  Allan Rutter: We've also talked about safety risks associated with people walking across the tracks at the crossings or somewhere else.
• 15:02
  Allan Rutter: Rail safety folks refer to these people as trespassers, which we might refer to as pedestrians.
• 15:09
  Allan Rutter: Why is that?
• 15:10
  Allan Rutter: What's that name about?
• 15:12
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, trespassing has been a long-standing, tricky problem for the railroads and the public themselves.
• 15:18
  Jeff Warner: So a trespasser is someone who is not supposed to be on the rail right- of- way.
• 15:23
  Jeff Warner: The rail right-of-way is privately owned by the railroad and is not to be utilized by the public.
• 15:29
  Jeff Warner: Often we see people using it for shortcuts or even recreation, such as riding their four-wheelers or snowmobiles.
• 15:38
  Jeff Warner: And that is not an allowable use of that right-of-way.
• 15:42
  Allan Rutter: So you've led some national research projects on trespassing mitigation.
• 15:47
  Allan Rutter: What are some of the strategies for reducing some of these pedestrian or trespasser incidents?
• 15:55
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, when you think about a trespasser incident, the people have no protection.
• 15:59
  Jeff Warner: So those incidents are usually going to be fatal.
• 16:02
  Jeff Warner: The trains are very big, usually traveling very fast.
• 16:05
  Jeff Warner: And so it's a very challenging situation to eliminate those problems.
• 16:11
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 16:21
  Jeff Warner: You could apply that same approach to trespassing as well.
• 16:25
  Jeff Warner: Engineering approaches could be something like applying fences.
• 16:29
  Jeff Warner: Education is even more important potentially than grade crossings for those people that are on the right-of-way.
• 16:36
  Jeff Warner: It could just be that they don't know that they're not supposed to be there.
• 16:40
  Jeff Warner: So let's get that information out to them.
• 16:42
  Jeff Warner: And enforcement is also critical for trespassing.
• 16:47
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 16:56
  Allan Rutter: That's either removed or it's closed.
• 16:59
  Allan Rutter: What are some of the approaches that can replace or close those current grade crossings?
• 17:04
  Allan Rutter: What can be done?
• 17:06
  Jeff Warner: Oftentimes, especially in an urban area, you'll have a series of grade crossings along a corridor.
• 17:12
  Jeff Warner: Looking at that entire corridor to maybe find the major roadway that could be grade separated.
• 17:19
  Jeff Warner: That grade separation on a major roadway would improve mobility and, of course, improve safety with the elimination of the grade crossing.
• 17:26
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 17:39
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 17:49
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 18:06
  Allan Rutter: It's a bridge, basically.
• 18:08
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 18:42
  Allan Rutter: We've seen about $160 million worth of awards already being made earlier this year.
• 18:49
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 19:02
  Allan Rutter: Those grade separations are fairly expensive, right?
• 19:06
  Jeff Warner: They are very expensive.
• 19:07
  Jeff Warner: And having a dedicated program is going to really improve the number of grade separations we can do around the state.
• 19:14
  Jeff Warner: We also talked about technology earlier.
• 19:17
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 19:35
  Allan Rutter: Yeah, not every grade crossing is going to be easy to grade separate.
• 19:39
  Allan Rutter: Those things, like I said, they're $30 to $40 to $50 million, depending on the geometry and what the land looks like.
• 19:46
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 19:55
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 20:16
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 20:35
  Allan Rutter: Instead, what are the two larger sets of fatalities and injuries that the FRA keeps track of?
• 20:42
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 20:52
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 21:03
  Jeff Warner: We've been touting for a number of years the dramatic decrease in grade crossing fatalities and injuries over the past 50 years.
• 21:11
  Jeff Warner: But the reality is, recent trends are heading in a troubling direction with the last five plus years increasing in fatalities and injuries.
• 21:21
  Allan Rutter: And that's certainly the case for trespassing.
• 21:23
  Allan Rutter: Trespasser fatalities are on an incline, which drives that total number up.
• 21:28
  Allan Rutter: Let me shift a little bit.
• 21:30
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 21:39
  Allan Rutter: Richards, who was from TTI originally.
• 21:42
  Allan Rutter: This year, that conference executive committee selected you for this award.
• 21:47
  Allan Rutter: Tell our listeners about that and what the award means to you.
• 21:51
  Jeff Warner: That was a tremendous honor.
• 21:52
  Jeff Warner: That was completely unexpected.
• 21:54
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 22:04
  Jeff Warner: I think winning the award reflects an understanding of how important research can be to improving safety at grade crossings along rights of way.
• 22:12
  Jeff Warner: The previous winners have all been real champions of grave crossing safety, so to be recognized with them is just tremendously unbelievable.
• 22:19
  Jeff Warner: I'm just glad that I've been able to contribute to rail safety enough to be recognized by this organization.
• 22:27
  Allan Rutter: So now, Mr.
• 22:28
  Allan Rutter: Richards was a former student of Texas A&M with degrees in both engineering and economics.
• 22:34
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 22:49
  Allan Rutter: First, tell us a little bit about the inventory.
• 22:52
  Allan Rutter: What do we mean by a grade crossing inventory and why is that information important?
• 22:59
  Jeff Warner: I think I mentioned earlier that there's over 200,000 grade crossings in the U.S.
• 23:04
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 23:15
  Jeff Warner: But we need to understand where to address safety.
• 23:20
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 23:36
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 23:50
  Allan Rutter: It also has to do with how close is that grade crossing to another intersection.
• 23:55
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 24:10
  Allan Rutter: That inventory is a rich source of information for identifying which crossings are more risky than others.
• 24:20
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, I think the states are really interested in making data-driven decisions, and having the inventory allows that to happen.
• 24:27
  Jeff Warner: It's a very critical first component of that decision making.
• 24:32
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 24:53
  Allan Rutter: So with that information in hand, one of the other things Mr.
• 24:56
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 25:16
  Allan Rutter: You've been involved in creating some of those formulas.
• 25:19
  Allan Rutter: 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?
• 25:33
  Jeff Warner: Yeah, the inventory data is going to be the primary source of the data that feeds into those indices or equations.
• 25:39
  Jeff Warner: Every state does it a little bit different.
• 25:42
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 25:53
  Jeff Warner: And the data that we talked about for the inventory plays a major role in that.
• 25:58
  Allan Rutter: Building on Mr.
• 26:00
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 26:14
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 26:51
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 27:17
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 27:32
  Allan Rutter: That included Texas, given that we, in addition to having the most grade crossings in the country, we have the most grade crossing fatalities.
• 27:41
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 28:00
  Allan Rutter: Jeff, talk a little bit about what are the differences between a crossing by crossing approach and that state action plan.
• 28:07
  Allan Rutter: 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?
• 28:18
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 28:31
  Jeff Warner: Each state is responsible for creating their own state action plan.
• 28:35
  Jeff Warner: Each state has their unique set of safety issues that they are trying to address.
• 28:39
  Jeff Warner: 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.
• 28:49
  Jeff Warner: As we mentioned, those safety measures could be engineering, education, and enforcement.
• 28:57
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 29:14
  Allan Rutter: It might take either a grade separation or some additional pavement markings or signs to help make that more visible to the driver.
• 29:24
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 29:46
  Allan Rutter: We had talked about how back in 2008, the first 10 states were identified to put those action plans in place.
• 29:54
  Allan Rutter: Subsequently, Congress directed every state to put one of these in place and asked those original 10 to redo their plans.
• 30:03
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 30:19
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 30:42
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 30:54
  Jeff Warner: Absolutely.
• 30:56
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 31:09
  Allan Rutter: What are some of the reasons that motivate you to do what you do each day?
• 31:14
  Jeff Warner: The grade crossing research that we do is highly focused on safety.
• 31:20
  Jeff Warner: So it is easy to be motivated when you understand that the work that you're putting in could save lives.
• 31:28
  Jeff Warner: We've seen a reduction over 50 years of incidents, fatalities, and injuries.
• 31:34
  Jeff Warner: However, with the increase in those numbers in recent years, we know that our work is needed now more than ever.
• 31:43
  Jeff Warner: So the motivation is pretty easy.
• 31:46
  Jeff Warner: Put in the work, come up with the research, and come up with better solutions that we can improve safety and save lives.
• 31:54
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 32:04
  Allan Rutter: Thanks for being with us.
• 32:06
  Jeff Warner: Thank you, Allan, for having me.
• 32:07
  Jeff Warner: I appreciate it.
• 32:11
  Allan Rutter: Let me close by repeating some important information Jeff shared with us today.
• 32:15
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 32:24
  Allan Rutter: Look for the blue sign on the pole with the crossbucks and flashing lights.
• 32:28
  Allan Rutter: That emergency notification sign has a phone number that you need to call and then tell them the crossing number listed on the sign.
• 32:36
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 32:47
  Allan Rutter: Always be safe around train tracks.
• 32:50
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 33:01
  Allan Rutter: 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.
• 33:09
  Allan Rutter: Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System.
• 33:19
  Allan Rutter: The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau.
• 33:22
  Allan Rutter: I'm your host, Allan Rutter.
• 33:24
  Allan Rutter: Thanks again for joining us.
• 33:26
  Allan Rutter: See you next time.