Impacts of road and rail temporal traffic variations on grade crossings exposure, design, and regulation in Manitoba

• Main Authors: Giuseppe Grande, Garreth Rempel, Jonathan D. Regehr
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-12-01
• Series: Transportation Engineering
• Subjects: Grade crossing; Temporal traffic variations; Cross-product; Annual average daily traffic (AADT); Grade crossing regulation
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666691X20300221

Transport Canada has recently published regulations and guidance for design considerations at grade crossings. Cross-product, or the product of average daily vehicles and trains, is one of several criteria that define warning system requirements. While based on readily available data, application of the cross-product may oversimplify the interactions between vehicles and trains at a crossing by failing to account for known temporal variations in both modes.Through two analyses, this paper investigates the effects of temporal traffic variations on estimated grade crossing exposure and develops insights about alternatives to quantify this exposure. The first analysis considers the effect of daily road traffic variations on grade crossing exposure and compliance at 240 rural grade crossings. Nine of the studied crossings (4%) experienced at least one day for which the estimated single-day exposure indicated a need for an upgraded warning system, based on the cross-product criterion alone. Conversely, 91 crossings (38%) had warning systems that would be considered over-designed for the entire year. The second analysis considers the effect of hourly road and rail traffic variations on grade crossing exposure at 13 urban grade crossings by estimating hourly cross-product equivalents. Each of the eleven studied gated crossings featured at least seven hourly cross-product equivalents that exceeded the cross-product threshold for gated crossings.The findings demonstrate that the cross-product may misrepresent vehicle-train interactions at a crossing by suppressing temporal variability in road and rail traffic. Consequently, these variations should be considered in design and prioritization decisions for reducing risk and delay at grade crossings.