GA Railroad crossing deaths drop over the decades

August 5th, 2013

Railroad crossing related deaths are down in Georgia, despite a lack of equipment at most of these state intersections. WABE's John Lorinc reports.

There are roughly 5,000 public rail crossings in Georgia.

However, more than half, about 3,500 of them, aren’t equipped with gates or bells that warn people about oncoming trains, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation.

GDOT officials say the organization is constantly keeping an eye out for spots that need extra equipment.

“We’re not picking based on what community is the loudest about a crossing, we’re not picking based on anything other than the formula that we have that says how safe or unsafe a crossing is at a given time and that can change from month-to-month,” says GDOT spokeswoman Natalie Dale.

Dale says it costs about $300,000 to install a system at a crossing, and there are cases where that’s not financially feasible.

“Some areas of the state have one train that comes through a week, and they’ll have a flagger come out while the train is coming through to stop traffic. So, if we were to put gates at that crossing, it wouldn’t be the best use of the $8 million we get in funding,” says Dale.

According to GDOT, there were six fatalities at rail crossings in 2012.

Dale says that is about a fifth of what the average number of deaths were during the 1970’s.