The complete railroad crossing inventory analysis tool
Derrick Beasley
IT Specialist
Burns & McDonnell Engineering
9400 Ward Parkway
Kansas City, MO 64114
Phone: 816-333-9400
Fax: 816-822-3463
Email: dbeasley@burnsmcd.com
Introduction
Operation Lifesaver, a national, non-profit public education program dedicated to
reducing crashes at highway / railroad intersections, reports that nationwide in 1999,
about 400 people died from train / vehicle collisions at grade crossings. Another 1,360
people were injured. Helping find ways to reduce accidents at grade crossings was the
driving force behind a study Burns & McDonnell is conducting for the Kansas
Department of Transportation grade crossing safety program. The safety program
involves maintaining an updated inventory of crossing characteristics and prioritizing the
crossings based on accident potential.
Over 750,000 pieces of information were inventoried for crossings throughout the State
of Kansas. In order for the information to be easily managed, evaluated and analyzed,
Burns & McDonnell designed a Highway/Railroad Crossing Inventory Information
Management System (CIIMS) that has several custom analysis tools to manage their
grade crossing safety program.
System evaluation
Creating custom applications is often necessary when "off the shelf" software is
incapable of providing the necessary analysis tools. Packaging several software tools and
controls together creates a synergy that takes full advantage of each platform's strengths,
providing a much better option than using a single application. Developing a new
application also allows all the functionality needs to be addressed under one package that
may not be available in existing software.
Deciding on whether to design a new system or modify an existing one comes down to
the uniqueness of each situation. Burns & McDonnell decided to design a custom
application for several reasons. First, an application was required that had several unique
features, in addition to interacting with a current relational database system. Second, an
existing system with the uniqueness and all the interactive capabilities the client desired
was very unlikely to exist. Third, modifying an "off the shelf" software package to
utilize all the unique features of an existing database architecture was not feasible; again,
due to specific functionality requirements. Therefore, it was determined that the most
viable alternative was to build an application with all the necessary tools to manage the
safety program. The components of the system are described in the following sections.
Figure 4.1 illustrates an overview of CIIMS application.
Figure 4.1. CIIMS Application Overview
