The Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board (FMSIB) continues its work to provide recommendations to the Legislature on a prioritized list of prominent road-rail crossing conflicts throughout the state. This works comes on the heels of the city-funded 2016 report out of the Joint Transportation Committee (JTC). That report directed the JTC to conduct a study evaluating the impacts of prominent road-rail conflicts and develop a corridor-based prioritization process for addressing the impacts on a statewide level. At-grade railroad crossings, where roads cross railroad tracks at the same level, can typically function adequately while population and traffic levels remain low. As both rail and road traffic increases, and trains get longer, at-grade crossings become more problematic, impacting communities in a variety of ways. The phrase “road-rail conflict” is used to describe potentially problematic at-grade crossings. The 2016 report identified more than 300 problematic road-rail crossings statewide.

During the 2017 legislative session, the Legislature took the JTC findings and directed the FMSIB to continue the work of the study by updating the database created in the study. The FMSIB will add data from the most recent versions of the state freight and goods transportation system update, marine cargo forecast, and other relevant sources. The Legislature also directed FMSIB to identify and recommend a statewide list of projects using a corridor-based approach.

In addition, a FMSIB committee is working to prioritize the 300+ road-rail crossing identified in the 2016 report. FMSIB staff have interviewed representatives from the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPA) and the Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO) to gain a better understanding of the crossings and what, if any, improvements are underway. Based on these conversations over the past few months, staff have sorted the list of 300+ road-rail crossings into three tiers.

The first tier includes improvement projects that are in the design phase and are awaiting construction. Upon review of these projects, it was found that many have been funded. Tier two projects have been planned but have not reached the design phase. Tier three projects have been identified but have not been studied or scoped. Of the 300+ projects, 16 are in tier one, 32 in tier two, and 27 are in tier three. The remaining 225+ projects that did not make the tiers have been identified as being problematic, but no consensus exists on a solution.

FMSIB held its second meeting in late April for staff to update the road-rail committee on its efforts. There was a good discussion on the projects that have been identified in the three tiers, and agreement further conversations are needed with MPO and RTPO to gain a better understanding of the projects being discussed.

The next meeting of the committee will take place in June where they are expected to begin making decisions on prioritization, as well as recommendations to the Legislature on next steps.