Abstract
Traffic accidents at highway-rail crossing result in larger social and economic damages than the accidents at the typical highway intersections. The traditional control and warning systems of the highway-rail crossing have limitations in that 1) they do not recognize the differences of the trains' arrival times because they rely on the distance-based control system, rather than the time-based one, and 2) thereby they usually cause longer delays of vehicles and pedestrians at the highway-rail crossings. The objective of this study is to develop a time-based railroad crossing control system which takes into account the speed and expected arrival time of trains. using the spot speeds and acceleration rates of trains measured at three points, the developed system was found to be able to accurately estimate the arrival time of train. VISSIM simulation package was utilized to compare system effect of the developed time-based railroad crossing control system with that of the conventional distance-based one. It was found that the developed time-based railroad crossing control system reduced the average travel time, maximum delay length, average delay time, and average number of stop-experienced vehicles as much as 7.0$\%$, 75.6$\%$, 12.7$\%$, and 60.0$\%$, respectively, compared with those from the conventional distance-based one.
