Safety in Highway-Rail Grade Crossings

Dear Colleagues,

The railroad is one of the most sustainable transportation modes from economic and social perspectives. Safety at railroads, especially at highway–rail grade crossings (HRGCs), is an important social and economic concern. HRGCs, sometimes referred to as level crossings, are where highways and railways intersect with each other at grade level. Crashes at such locations are usually catastrophic due to the huge mass differences between vehicles and trains. The consequences are often further extended because of traffic delays on both the railways and highways.

This Special Issue will focus on the topic of highway–rail grade crossing safety. Motorists hold most of the responsibility for avoiding collisions, so state and local highway authorities are responsible for implementing grade-crossing improvements, grade separations, and quit-zone improvements, while railroads need to work with government agencies to relieve operational and safety concerns. Safety is a very complex and sensitive concern for both government agencies and railroads, so it is very important for them to have better models and application tools to fully exploit and better understand safety-performance patterns and the effectiveness of safety-improvement operations at HRGCs. Authors are invited to submit papers on identifying crash or crash-severity contributors, understanding contributors’ effects, quantifying countermeasures’ effectiveness (crossing-geometry improvements, illumination, and passive/active treatments), the assessment of crossing safety, maintenance, management, operations, advanced prediction modeling, decision making in selecting safety-improvement treatments, the deployment of new technologies and new concepts regarding crossing safety and operations,  spatiotemporal analysis, automated vehicles at highway–rail grade crossings, pedestrian safety at HRGCs, and sustainable operations and conservation. We welcome both theoretical and practical studies that bring significant contributions in HRGC safety and operations.

Assoc. Pro Pan Lu
Dr. Xingju Wang
Dr. Lu Gao
Guest Editors

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• highway–rail grade crossing
• level crossing
• rail transportation
• autonomous vehicles
• crossing safety
• traffic control
• railroad