The cost benefit analysis of level crossing safety measures

Abstract

This paper on the cost-benefit analysis of railroad level crossing (LC) safety measures is from the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer System Design and Operation in Railways and Other Transit Systems, held in Beijing, China, in 2010. The authors contend that road users’ behavior plays a large part in accidents because most of these accidents do not occur following a failure of the railway system but are due to individuals’ behavior. Knowing this, the European Rail Optimization Safety Analysis (ROSA) project intends to identify several safety measures through a cost benefit analysis (CBA) in order to enhance the safety level at LCs on the French and German railway systems. The authors report on this CBA, explaining that such an analysis allows comparisons between all the possible alternatives to aid the decision makers to be able to invest in the most profitable safety measure. The authors conclude that the best safety measures are without any doubt those that directly act on road users’ behavior, such as radar installations on roads and rail or safety campaigns. However, it is very difficult to include all the effects of all the possible safety options, so these results must be interpreted with caution.