Google Maps to Include Railroad Crossing Data
WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) — The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) announced a new partnership with Google to display rail crossing data on mapping applications.
Although the FRA has made contact with multiple mapping software and hardware manufacturers such as MapQuest, TomTom, Garmin and Apple, Google is the first to agree to include data from about 250,000 public and private railroad crossings in its navigation software, Google Maps.
No timeline for the addition of the data has been set, but California-based Google has said the project is a priority.
The information is already available to consumers via the Department of Transportation’s Rail Crossing Locator App. In addition to providing the location of at-grade crossings, the app can also search and filter different types of railroad crossings and tell the user what to do in case of an emergency or safety concern at a specific crossing.
The FRA conceded that many drivers crossing unfamiliar areas at night use GPS mapping applications to guide them and that adding the data to such software “just makes sense.”
The FRA estimates that about 270 people died in at-grade crossings in 2014, up for the first time this decade over the previous year, 2013. Some 843 people were also injured in 2014.
Many of these deaths are preventable according to the FRA, since many railroad crossings feature ineffective warning symbols, typically in the form of a single white X.
The news comes as grade-crossing measures in a Senate bill cleared the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee last week. This legislation, in turn, joins a passenger rail reauthorization bill passed by the House in March that allocates $35 billion to safety improvements at grade crossings.
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