1. West Virginia Department of Transportation Progress of the Railroad Crossings Project at the West Virginia Department of Transportation Authors Marshall Burgess, Everett Perry, and Kyle Weatherholt Geospatial Transportation Information Section

2. Highway –Rail Grade Programs 1912 First authorization of federal funds for highway construction in modern times During the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s Congress passed more legislation that provided money for crossing safety In 1970’s congress passed several pieces of legislation that was aimed the safety issues at railroad crossing; that by 1975 all public and private crossings had been surveyed and put in the U.S. DOT National Highway-Rail Crossing Inventory. This initial inventory was mandated and funded. It was also focused more towards the needs of railroads than Highways.

3. The continuous maintenance of this database was mandated but unfunded (voluntary). Over the next 33 years new crossings were entered when requested existing crossings were updated Due to the focus and the voluntary nature of the continuous maintenance of the data the information about the highway system was not always updated Properly In the late 1990’s early 2000’s an attempt was made to add Latitude and Longitude information to the database by FRA using a contractor to supply this information for the whole system

4. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 Require accurate Latitude and Longitude data for each crossing Yearly reporting of data for all crossings Rules are now laws Set deadline of October 16, 2010 for the initial reinventory

5. October 2009 started organizing and verifying data available FRA inventory database with latitude and longitude from contractor The latitudes and longitudes were not accurate and were duplicated putting 20 to 30 crossings on the same point. Since the Road names were not updated on a regular basis or at all the road names had been changed at least once and most likely many times over the past 33 years we could not use them to connect to our inventory database. RTI and SAMB data layers Track Charts County Maps with crossing number created by utility inspector

6. RTI Data SAMB Data

7. WVDOT Data

8. WVDOT Data intersected with road layer

9. Crossing created using intersect tool Field crew Track charts

10. http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/crossing/Xingqryloc.aspxhttp://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/crossing/Xingqryloc.aspx

11. Benefits of all this effort Improved safety More accurate information as our data is changed in the road inventory log we can automatically apply to the FRA database Better communication with the different railroad companies