Towards improving sustainability of rail transport by reducing traffic delays at level crossings: A case study for the State of Florida

Abstract Rail transport makes a significant contribution to the economy of many geographical locations around the globe. Along with numerous merits, rail transport has some demerits as well, such as traffic delays and safety issues at level crossings. Traffic delays at level crossings have various negative impacts, including economic losses, increasing number of violations because of delays, queue spillbacks at the adjacent intersections, and environmental impacts. This study reviews a number of level crossing delay estimation approaches found in the literature. Based on the state-of-the-art review and practical considerations, a new approach for estimation of the overall traffic delay per day at level crossings with the existing warning devices is proposed to improve the sustainability of rail transport. Moreover, in order to assist with the selection of countermeasures for level crossing upgrades, the proposed approach can be also used to estimate the overall traffic delay per day at level crossings after implementation of countermeasures. A case study is conducted for the public and private level crossings in the State of Florida, considering the countermeasures commonly used in the United States. It was revealed that traffic delays were higher at the public level crossings than at the private level crossings, both before and after implementation of the candidate countermeasures. The case study also indicated that low-cost countermeasures could be more advantageous in terms of safety effectiveness and traffic delays as compared to many high-cost conventional countermeasures. Furthermore, certain attributes of the level crossings in Florida with the highest traffic delays were investigated.