Extra drive time when a train blocks a crossing

How is the extra drive time estimated?

We estimate how much longer the drive is from the nearest fire or EMS station, and to the nearest hospital, when a train stops on a crossing. We use OpenStreetMap roads at normal driving speeds, with no traffic.

We treat crossings of the same railroad within half a mile along the track as blocked by the same train.

Sources: OpenStreetMap roads.

Which stations and hospitals count?

Fire stations, EMS stations and hospitals come from the USGS National Structures Dataset.

We leave out hospitals whose names show a psychiatric, rehabilitation or addiction center, so a hospital we list may not have an emergency room.

We join each station and hospital to the nearest road on its own side of the tracks.

Sources: USGS National Structures Dataset.

What speeds are used for each road?

Where a road has a speed limit on the map, we use 80% of it, since we assume drivers go a bit under the limit. Gravel, dirt and other rough roads are slower, and roads marked impassable are left out. We only use roads that any car may drive through, so private roads and customer-only roads are left out too. A bollard, a private gate or a similar barrier ends a road, but an ordinary gate is treated as open. Roads with no speed limit on the map use these speeds:

Freeways: 56 mph, ramps 28 mph

Major highways: 53 mph, ramps 25 mph

Main roads: 40 mph, ramps 19 mph

Secondary roads: 34 mph, ramps 16 mph

Connector roads: 25 mph, ramps 12 mph

Minor roads: 16 mph

Residential streets: 16 mph

Shared streets: 6 mph

Service roads: 9 mph

How is each crossing found on the road map?

We find a crossing on the road map by its federal crossing number within about 500 feet. Without that number, we use the nearest road crossing of the track within about 200 feet when the street name agrees or it is the only one there. A crossing we cannot find shows no estimate.

When are minutes left out or rounded?

When a blocked crossing leaves a short dead-end road with no other way out, we do not show minutes for it.

When the nearest station or hospital is more than 20 minutes away by road, we show a plain line instead of minutes.

We stop counting at 30 extra minutes and then show "more than 30".

We round to whole minutes, half up, and show "less than 1" for under half a minute.

Which homes and schools are on the far side?

We also count the homes and schools on the far side: those whose quickest drive from the nearest fire or EMS station goes over the crossing and gets at least 1 minute longer while a train is there. Homes are 2020 Census housing units, counted at the center of each census block; schools are public and private school locations from the National Center for Education Statistics.

A home or school counts only when its drive from the station ends up on the other side of the track. Homes and schools that the stopped train cuts off from the station always count.

When the crossing itself adds less than 1 minute, the homes and schools we count sit past another crossing that the same train blocks, and the crossing page says so.

We round homes to the nearest 10 under 100, the nearest 50 under 1,000, and the nearest 100 from 1,000 up, and show "fewer than 10" below 10. We leave out schools that are closed, inactive or not open yet, and preschool and adult education schools. The line shows only when the fire or EMS line shows minutes.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau 2020 Census blocks; NCES public school locations (2024-25) and private school locations (2023-24).

Where do the roads, stations and hospitals come from?

Road data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.

The Sources page lists the dates of the latest road and station data we used.

Sources: OpenStreetMap roads; Open Database License; USGS National Structures Dataset.

See the source dates on the Sources page.