title: A mathematical modeling approach to resource allocation for railroad-highway crossing safety upgrades.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, United States.
authors.forename: Dinçer
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Konur
authors.forename: Mihalis M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Golias
authors.forename: Brandon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Darks
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000517:prevention & control*; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D018803:Models, Economic; D011890:Railroads; D040841:Resource Allocation; D012449:Safety / Q000191:economics*; D013714:Tennessee