Federal officials target 25 rail crossings for safety upgrades

About half at-grade local intersections have only 'passive' safety warnings
By RAD SALLEE - Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle - July 5, 2007

Weeks after his daughter, niece and two of their friends crashed into a train and died, Doug Moyers is readying himself for a mission: upgrading safety measures at rail crossings.

"I'm going to become an expert in this, and we're going out to save some lives," he said.

He could find himself rather busy.


CROSSINGS BY THE NUMBERS


Harris County
Crossings: 1,389
At grade: 87%
Signalized: 55%

TxDOT district*
Crossings: 2,011
At grade: 89% Signalized: 48%

Other counties
Crossings: 622
At grade: 93%
Signalized: 34%

* Harris, Montgomery, Galveston, Brazoria, Fort Bend, Waller Counties
Source: Texas Department of Transportation

Roughly half of the nearly 1,800 at-grade, or street-level, crossings in the Houston area, like the East Archer location where the teens died June 14, have only "passive" safety devices that are not train-activated. These include "stop," "yield" or "crossing ahead" signs, pavement markings and street lighting.


There are 25 crossings in the Texas Department of Transportation's six-county Houston District that federal officials have approved for "active" signalization — flashing lights and crossing arms.

Among them:

• The East Archer Road crossing where Loral Nicole Moyers, 12, her cousin Macy Elizabeth Moyers, 14, and friends Colette Windham and Austin Davis, both 14, died when the sport utility vehicle they were in crashed into a stopped rail car June 14. The crossing near Baytown, equipped with crossbucks and pavement markings but no street lights or devices activated by the presence of a train, had been the site of four previous accidents since 1979.
The crossing, officials said, was a few months away from getting the flashing signals and gate arms, devices family members said could have prevented the teens' deaths.

• A crossing at Almeda and Almeda-Genoa in southeast Houston, according to Federal Railroad Administration records, has been the site of 15 crashes that have injured seven people since 1977, despite its flashing lights. Like the one on East Archer, it is approved to get gate arms.

• A crossing on Texas 6 in Hitchcock, also equipped with the red flashers, has been the scene of eight accidents, including one in 1987 that killed two people and injured three when an ambulance smashed into a parked rail car. It also has been approved for crossing arms.

Of the 25 area crossings approved for upgrades, work is completed on five, and the rest probably will be finished by the end of 2008, although that depends, in part, on the work schedule of the railroads, TxDOT spokeswoman Janelle Gbur said.

Four other crossings, all near downtown Houston, are recommended for closing.

In addition, TxDOT has recommended 12 other crossings in the Houston district for upgrades. If approved, these likely would be completed by late 2009, Gbur said.


At-grade crossings
Railroads consider at-grade crossings "an opportunity for something bad to happen" and applaud their elimination, Union Pacific Railroad spokesman Joe Arbona said.

TxDOT recommends about 15 crossings a year for improvements in the Houston district, ranking them with a formula that considers vehicle and train traffic, maximum train speed, types of warning devices in place and the crossing's five-year crash history.

Arbona noted that installing flashing signals at an at-grade crossing cannot guarantee safety as long as some drivers ignore the warnings.

"More than half of accidents happen at places where you have signal lights," he said.

However, a driver has to go to some trouble to crash through a crossing arm or deliberately go around it. All 25 of the approved upgrades call for gate arms.

Gbur said the number of crossings equipped annually with flashers or gate arms depends largely on the federal money available. The combined state and federal funds for Texas total about $35 million a year, and it costs about $170,000 per crossing to add the lights and arms, she said.


Closings in city
Although progress is slow, the Federal Railroad Administration is working to reduce at-grade crossings. Gbur said TxDOT must eliminate two of them for every new one that it opens.

An example is the planned closing of four at-grade crossings within a half-mile stretch of Winter Street north of Washington Avenue. Three others nearby were closed in 2005.

All of those crossings are on narrow streets lined with small, aging frame houses rapidly being replaced with upscale apartments. Four, on Holly, Johnson, Colorado and Sabine, have racked up 16 collisions, three with injuries.

Gbur said TxDOT can spend federal funds only on crossings approved through the federal evaluation process. But, she added, there is nothing to prevent a city or county from working directly with a railroad and using its own money to improve crossings.

Houston's policy
Houston Public Works spokesman Wes Johnson said the city never has paid for railroad signals or gate arms, because this has "historically been a federal and state function." Far more accidents occur where streets cross other streets, so the city focuses on those locations, he said.

"We do put up stop signs at railroad crossings," Johnson said.

And nearly all rail crossings in the city receive enough light from city street lamps for motorists to see trains, even without flashing lights, he said.

Union Pacific's Arbona said the East Archer crossing near Baytown will be upgraded with flashing lights within six months.

The crossing's crash history did not stand out among other at-grade rail crossings in the Houston area.

Moyers said residents of the unincorporated area near the Baytown city limits had asked Union Pacific for help in the past and had received some.

"They cleared some brush — the tree line used to come all the way to the road — and they painted 'Railroad Crossing' on the road itself," he said. "But there's just a 'yield' sign. And if there's nothing coming, you keep on going."

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