Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 18, 1995 TAG: 9511200106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mastrangelo, formerly of Roanoke and Virginia Tech, is an electrical engineer at Norfolk Southern Corp.'s Research and Tests Laboratory in Alexandria. Lately, he has been trying to find better ways to control car, truck and bus traffic at railroad crossings.
He uses computerized cameras to record each time a vehicle ignores warning signals or drives around crossing gates to beat an approaching train. That's where the scary pictures come in, and Mastrangelo has quite a collection.
Mastrangelo has shots taken at night of a car pulling up behind another car stopped at a crossing gate, then backing up and driving through the crossing just one-half second ahead of a passenger train doing 79 mph.
His pictures show a tractor trailer driving around a gate, tearing it down. A school bus stops, then drives through the crossing even though the gates are closing. A pickup truck drives around a gate and collides with a car coming illegally from the other direction. Even a police cruiser speeds around a gate without slowing down.
The photos emphasize the importance of Norfolk Southern's study. Hundreds of people die or are injured each year at the nation's 180,000 railroad crossings. Crossing safety has drawn more attention since seven teen-agers died when their school bus was hit by a train near Chicago.
Mastrangelo's cameras are mounted on utility poles on each side of a crossing on a four-lane, undivided highway in North Carolina. He would not identify the precise location in order to protect the reliability of the study, which isn't over until next year.
When a train trips the crossing's traffic controls - 30 to 40 seconds before it passes through the crossing - the cameras are activated. They take photographs each half-second and record the time remaining before the train arrives at the crossing.
NS is doing the research in conjunction with the Federal Railway Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The railroad and North Carolina are splitting the cost.
Specifically, the researchers are trying to find ways to reduce the number of drivers who intentionally ignore crossing gates. Some possibilities are: building pavement-mounted median barriers; using longer crossing-gate bars; or using four gates, one in each direction of travel on each side of a crossing.
Besides making traveling safer, NS could benefit financially from the research. "Every time you don't have a collision with a motor vehicle [at a rail crossing], you save a lot of money," NS spokesman Bob Auman said.
NS, which has led the rail industry for the past six years in worker safety, wants to put the same emphasis on crossing safety, Mastrangelo said. The railroad recently began enforcing traffic laws at rail crossings with its own uniformed police department; next year, it will use cameras to monitor crossings and ticket drivers.
In 1994, according to the Federal Railway Administration, 4,503 accidents occurred at the nation's rail crossings, killing 572 people and injuring 1,829. Virginia fared better than many states, with 56 accidents, five deaths and 9 injuries.
Before NS turned on its cameras at the North Carolina crossing on Nov. 1, 1994, a man was killed there.
Each day, 34 trains cross the study site. The highway has a 45 mph speed limit and carries 24,000 cars a day.
During a 20-week period of the study, an average of 43 drivers a week drove around the gates, risking their lives to save the average 41/2 minutes that fast-moving passenger and freight trains block the crossing.
The railroad then installed spring-mounted barriers along the road's double-yellow centerline, extending several dozen feet from the crossing. That reduced the number of crossing violations to less than one-fourth of what they had been. When the four-gate scheme was tried, violations were cut even more.
In a final test at the crossing, researchers will see what effect using both the median barriers and the two additional gates will have on scofflaws, Mastrangelo said.
The research will be complete at its current location in March, then will move to another crossing for a test of longer gate arms. However, based on the dramatic results already shown by the study, North Carolina and NS already are installing additional gates and median barriers at crossings along a rail line between Charlotte and Greensboro.
That track runs through a heavily populated area and has been the site of 50 railroad crossing fatalities in the past five years. The segment is part of a proposed high-speed rail corridor that would offer two-hour service between Charlotte and Raleigh by 2001.
Many crossings will be permanently closed along the track and others will get the improved traffic controls, said Paul Worley of the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Passenger train speeds along the corridor will be increased to 95 mph, but that can't be done without improving crossing safety first, he said.
Results of the research will be shared with other states, Worley said.
Worley said he expects the new control measures to stop 99 percent of the violators at railroad crossings. Anyone who would drive around them would "really have to have a death wish," he said.
by CNB