A mathematical modeling approach to resource allocation for railroad‐highway crossing safety upgrades

State Departments of Transportation (S‐DOT's) periodically allocate budget for safety upgrades at railroad‐highway crossings. Efficient resource allocation is crucial for reducing accidents at railroad‐highway crossings and increasing railroad as well as highway transportation safety. While a specific method is not restricted to S‐DOT's, sorting type of procedures are recommended by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), United States Department of Transportation for the resource allocation problem. In this study, a generic mathematical model is proposed for the resource allocation problem for railroad‐highway crossing safety upgrades. The proposed approach is compared to sorting based methods for safety upgrades of public at‐grade railroad‐highway crossings in Tennessee. The comparison shows that the proposed mathematical modeling approach is more efficient than sorting methods in reducing accidents and severity.