Characteristics of Railway-Roadway Level Crossings at Coastal Railway Line in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Rail transportation is a safe, efficient, continuously operating sustainable transportation mode, in all-weather conditions, and light conditions. Along with these advantages, the role of rail transport has become increasingly important. Therefore, it is important to investigate the characteristics of the railway-roadway level crossings in Sri Lanka. Railway-roadway level crossings at coastal railway line from Aluthgama to Ambalangoda were visited to collect the roadway, railway, traffic, environmental, and crash data. Out of 51 crossings that observed in this study, about 94.1% of railway-roadway level crossings were facilitated with active safety measures. About 7.0% of railway-roadway level crossings were without gates and among them 33.3% of crossings were facilitated with passive safety measures and other crossings were under unsafe conditions. Several problems related to railway-roadway level crossing were identified. The collected data could be utilized to develop various statistical models for identifying relationships between the number of crashes and level crossing characteristics. It could be used to identify potential highcrash prone railway-roadway crossings and key factors which increase the number of crashes.