(The following story by Christine Ferretti appeared on The Detroit News website on January 4.)
VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich. — With its rain, snow, extreme heat and cold, Michigan is the ideal training ground for a new railroad barricade system designed to make crossings safer, transportation officials say.
After a few weeks of delays, a set of 3-foot-high reflective deterrents at Van Buren Township’s Denton Road railroad crossing should be popping out of the pavement by next week, Michigan Department of Transportation spokeswoman Janet Foran said.
With revamped heaters and brushes to weed out road debris, kinks in the nation’s first such safety system are expected to be resolved within days.
“The roadside can be a very harsh environment, and since this is new technology it’s taking some fine tuning to get it right,” Foran said. “Where else can you get heat, rain and snow all in the same week? They’ll be getting a workout in Michigan.”
The retractable posts, designed by Dublin, Ohio-based Intelligent Perimeter Systems, are housed in self-contained cartridges underground and will electrically deploy at the crossing as a train approaches.
The equipment is designed to discourage vehicles from driving around crossing gates – an act that resulted in 72 crashes in 2006 in Michigan, 11 of them fatal.
In the first 10 months of 2007, 289 people were killed nationally in crashes at crossings, including three in Michigan, according to federal statistics.
“The primary reason to have barricades is for those having fleeting, foolish thoughts in their heads. We want to discourage that line of thinking,” Foran added.
The double crossing, on Denton between Ecorse and Michigan, was selected by MDOT for the pilot because of low traffic volume – about 1,000 vehicles a day – and a low accident rate, Foran said.
“We don’t want to put it at a highly active crossing where there are problems,” Foran said. “The intent of the equipment is to get people’s reaction.”
The $257,000 test project, funded by MDOT and the Federal Railroad Administration, will run for 17 months through spring of 2009.