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The Texas Transportation Institute has created a Grade Crossing “Impedance”
or delay model that takes into account the volume and frequency of vehicular and
train traffic at highway-rail grade crossings to estimate the amount of time
motorists are delayed by rail traffic.
Anticipated Public Costs
The model measures the anticipated public costs associated with traffic
delays and calculates the extra emissions and fuel usage experienced while
delayed by a train at rail crossings.
The cost of collisions is added to time
costs, emissions, and fuel use to provide an annualized estimate of total public
costs at each grade crossing in the study.
Forecasting for growth in both rail
and vehicular traffic provides an annualized estimate of public costs through
the year 2016.
Public Benefit
The Net Present Value shown as the public benefit is the cumulative projected
cost burden over a 10 year period.
This can be assessed as the savings
associated with a grade separation or, as traffic levels change with changes to
roadways and rail, the net savings to the public of each improvement being
evaluated.
No public benefits of individual rail improvements were identified. |
