Hearing on
Railroad Grade Crossing Safety Issues
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The purpose of the hearing is to evaluate the current state of grade crossing safety and efforts to reduce the incidence of grade crossing accidents.
Since 1994, the absolute number of railroad grade crossing fatalities per year has been reduced by approximately forty-six percent. Together (with trespasser deaths) grade-crossing fatalities account for nearly 95 % of all U.S. rail fatalities. In 1999, according to Federal Railroad Administration data, there were 402 grade crossing fatalities (and 1,396 non-fatal incidents), a rate of 4.9 incidents per million train-miles. In 2004, there were 358 fatalities, 1,071 non-fatal incidents, a rate of 3.96 incidents per million train-miles. The reduction is significant in light of the large increase in highway traffic over this period. (Trespasser deaths in the same two years were 479 and 483 respectively.)
Despite this dramatic improvement in grade crossing safety, over four hundred motorists and pedestrians are killed in railroad grade crossing accidents each year. The FRA and major railroads are working to reduce the number of fatalities through improved engineering, grade crossing consolidation and elimination, installation of new highway traffic control devices, public awareness and education-- particularly through the successful Operation Lifesaver program-- and increased highway traffic enforcement.
Regulatory jurisdiction over grade crossings is a multilateral matter. The roads are usually public thoroughfares under the ownership of state or local governments. There are, however, some private crossings connecting non-public properties bisected by railroad tracks. Assistance for improving crossings and upgrading warning signals and gates is provided by the federal government through the “Section 130” program of grants administered by the Federal Highway Administration. The Federal Railroad Administration, on the other hand, has jurisdiction over the railroad operation of the crossing, including maintaining the equipment in proper working order. See 49 U.S.C. 20134.
The locomotive whistle or (in the diesel era) horn has been the traditional means of warning motorists and pedestrians of an approaching train. Over the years, many state or local restrictions were placed on sounding of horns at crossings for noise control purposes. In 1994, Congress enacted the “whistle ban” statute (49 U.S.C. 20153), which established a baseline federal requirement that horns be sounded at all crossings. Sounding horns could only be avoided by adopting one or more safety measures specified in the statute. The premise of the 1994 law was that by requiring fairly elaborate and expensive improvements to allow a crossing to remain open but horn-free, communities would be persuaded to prioritize crossings and improve only truly necessary ones, while closing redundant crossings. It does not appear that this has happened widely, due to local resistance to almost any crossing elimination.
Although final rules were to be issued in two phases in 1996 and 1998, FRA did not issue final rules until the spring of 2005. 70 Fed. Reg. 21844 (April 27, 2005) Under 49 U.S.C. 20153(j), even final rules cannot become effective for one year after issuance. Given the decade-long regime of no rules or interim rules, many communities invested considerable resources in installing equipment or taking other measures in reliance on FRA pronouncements, while having no assurance that the ultimate FRA requirements will in fact become legally effective or survive legal challenge.
The FRA rules add “Quiet Zone” regimes to the safety measures listed in the statute as the only means of avoiding the sounding of horns. Communities wishing to establish “Quiet Zones” would be required to adopt additional safety measures in compliance with FRA regulations. At a minimum, Quiet Zone crossings would be required to have flashing lights and gates. Additional safety measures may also be required. The FRA rule establishes a maximum train horn volume of 110 decibels.
In recent years, the effectiveness of horns (wherever sounded) has been called into question by empirical data compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board. In the mid-1990s, NTSB grade crossing investigations showed that in contemporary cars, with windows up and air conditioning on (but no radio), a locomotive horn could not be heard inside the car until the locomotive and its horn were 100 feet away. (FRA in adopting the 110dB horn limit, assumed that a motorist’s “decision point” is 50 feet from the crossing [70 Fed. Reg. 21880], but this will obviously vary with the speed of approaching vehicles.) Some observers have also questioned whether concentration on audible rather than high-intensity visual warnings is a wise policy in light of an aging and increasingly hearing-impaired population of drivers. One alternative to locomotive-mounted horns, employed in some areas of southern California among others, is so-called “wayside horns” mounted at or near the crossing and aimed at the approaching road, in order to reduce the acoustic “footprint” of the horn for surrounding areas. These are among the safety devices authorized under the FRA final rule.
Another area of technological advance affecting potential grade crossing safety measures is wireless electronic activation of safety devices. Hard-wired connections to activate warning devices or gates can be avoided and expense reduced considerably by using short-range transmitters or transponders. Inside the automobile itself, there has been some discussion in recent years of possible mandatory installation of radio-based grade crossing warning technology in new cars, but no such requirement has been proposed or adopted by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.