The Mississippi Department of Transportation is launching a pilot program aimed at making railroad crossings safer for commercial vehicles.
Long Beach, Mississippi will serve as the testing ground for MDOT’s railroad crossing improvement program. Nine of the ten railroad crossings in the city will undergo safety upgrades. Two of these crossings will soon be flattened as part of a dedicated truck route, and the remaining seven will be gradually modified to be more level, reported WLOX.
“Long Beach was picked as the pilot mostly because of the number of crossings,” said MDOT Director of Aeronautics and Rails Josh Stubbs. “They also had some issues with some of their crossings, but with only 10 crossings that’s kind of a good number to kind of figure out the hurdles, hangups and figure out how this is actually going to work.”
The project is estimated to cost $3 million and will begin on March 3rd. Officials estimate improving the entire state’s railroad crossings could cost $85 million and take 20 years.
“Something we can do is, or something we can help with, is signage — so providing things like low-ground clearance signs and giving drivers at least the information they need to make a decision,” Stubbs said. “But solving them and actually raising them is not something that happens overnight.”
“A conversation we’ve had to have with the railroad is if we’re coming in and making these improvements, we’d really like for you to try not to raise the tracks,” Stubbs said. “We understand the railroad track has to be maintained, but we would really like for them to be aware of what we are doing and anything that they can do to keep crossings from being elevated each time would be super helpful.”