Cost to make railroad crossings safer is skyrocketing. It means fewer are actually fixed

Missouri officials — along with their counterparts across the country — know that installing active warning devices at dangerous railroad crossings could save lives.

But they also cost money. And the price tag, which is partly determined by the railroads themselves, is only going up.

That means states, which have limited funds for these safety upgrades, can’t afford to install as many as they used to, a Star investigation revealed. And problem crossings can remain dangerous for years.

“We know how to improve the safety of many of these crossings,” said Thomas Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. “I mean, there are hundreds, maybe thousands. But there are some resource constraints there. And trying to get to all of them is difficult.”

In years past, installing lights and gates would run states anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000 per project, records show. Now, the cost can be as much as double that.

Not only does the government foot most — if not all — of the bill for these safety improvements, it pays the railroad to do the work.

As a train crash investigator for more than three decades, Bob Comer has studied countless passive railroad crossings — intersections with no gates or lights — and knows what needs to be done to make them safer. The costs of installing lights and gates, he said, has gotten out of hand.

“The railroads increased the cost to upgrade a crossing to $150,000, then $200,000, then $250,000, then to $300,000 and more,” Comer told The Star. “They tripled the price to do one crossing upgrade, but the states were still only getting the same yearly amount from the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration). So, the number of crossing upgrades were reduced greatly, but the railroads were still getting all of the money to do the work every year.”

Last year, the FHWA’s program for funding the upgrades distributed about $245 million to the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The amounts ranged from $1.225 million in seven states and Washington, D.C., to $20.8 million in Texas, which has the most miles of track in the country.

But that doesn’t even make a dent in what’s needed nationwide to upgrade all public passive crossings to have lights and gates.

In Missouri alone, which has the 11th most miles of track, the current estimated cost to upgrade such crossings is about $700 million, the state Department of Transportation wrote in its recent fiscal 2024 appropriations request. At the current funding rate, MoDOT said, those improvements would take 23 years to complete.

The agency is asking for $50 million to increase the number of crossings with active warning devices. Of the 3,311 public at-grade railroad crossings in Missouri, 1,420 — or 43% — don’t have those devices, according to MoDOT.

In the past five years, The Star found that nearly 57% of the fatal crashes at public railroad crossings in Missouri occurred at those unprotected intersections. In those crashes, 22 people died.

In the Show-Me state, the total amount of funding for safety improvements at public crossings is about $7.5 million annually — $6 million from the federal government and roughly $1.5 million from the state, generated from a 25-cent annual motor vehicle registration or renewal fee.

Several state transportation departments The Star spoke with said they average 20 to 25 projects a year to make troublesome crossings safer. Others spell that information out on their websites.

“While the cost of new installations has been steadily increasing, federal funding has remained relatively static in recent years, resulting in fewer projects being possible each year,” according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

And in Missouri, MoDOT said, “The number of projects that can be completed has decreased due to rising costs.”

In a transportation report outlining projects for fiscal years 2013 through 2017, MoDOT said that the average highway-rail crossing project costs $200,000 to $250,000, resulting in improvements to 30 to 35 crossings per year.

“Since 1976, this program has resulted in an 81 percent decrease in crashes; a 76 percent decrease in fatalities; and an 83 percent decrease in injuries,” the document said.

But a January 2022 draft of the Missouri Highway-Rail Grade Crossing State Action Plan shows how the rising costs have impacted the number of crossings that are upgraded.

“From 2017 to 2021, MoDOT has completed around 20 highway-rail grade crossing projects each year,” it said. “Historically, the average project costs around $400,000.”

One reason for those soaring costs, crash experts say, is the exorbitant prices railroads are charging for the work. They often submit invoices to the states for labor, lodging and food costs for the workers.

“Private industry pays much less for lights and gates than the railroad charges the government,” said Grant Davis, a Kansas City attorney who has represented many people who were injured by trains or families of those killed in crashes.

Comer said investigators have found that in some instances, railroads were charging the government for the rental of construction equipment on a daily basis when they actually rented it for a week at that cost.

In July, The Star submitted a request to MoDOT asking for records from the past 10 years regarding all railroad crossing upgrades across the state and the costs of each project. The request included the amount reimbursed to each railroad and the corresponding invoices submitted by those railroads.

MoDOT responded, saying it would take an estimated 500 hours of “professional research time” to produce records for about 490 projects. The price it said The Star would have to pay for that public information?

About $15,000.

In August, nearly two months after the Amtrak train derailment in northern Missouri that killed four and injured more than 150, MoDOT sent another message. This time, it said, The Star’s request had been closed because “the department has been named in legal action.”

In Ohio, however, records like these are posted online.

The state’s Public Utilities Commission includes detailed documents of its railroad crossing projects on its website. Ohio shares correspondence and memos regarding the upgrades and costs submitted by the railroads.

Take a project from February, when the Ohio Rail Development Commission authorized funding for Norfolk Southern Railway to install lights and gates at a crossing in Columbiana County. The commission approved $402,613 in funding and said “construction may commence at once.”

Among the documents was a breakdown of what the railroad submitted for the cost of the project. The estimate included $29,690.97 for meals and lodging, $40,587.45 for equipment rental and $69,894 for labor during the 33 days it said the project would take.

That broke down to $2,118.00 a day labor costs for a six-person crew.

A Norfolk Southern spokesman did not respond to The Star’s specific questions about those costs.

The Star shared that cost breakdown with Comer.

“Here is a perfect example,” the investigator said, “of the gigantic ripoff that is occurring with these railroad crossing upgrades all over the U.S. They are grossly misusing our federal money.”