Officials to install pricey quad gates to curtail railroad deaths

There’s an extra safety tool to stave off the rash of train fatalities in South Florida: a souped-up version of crossing gates that provide even more security for the public.

Nearly 60 of these barriers known as “quad gates” are scheduled to soon be installed across Broward and Palm Beach counties, along the corridor where the new higher-speed Brightline trains began running a month ago.

Crossings normally have one or two gates to tell the public it’s time to stop. Quad gates go farther: They cover all corners of an intersection, making it more challenging for anyone to get past them.

But there are dozens of other crossings along the same span of tracks not getting them. Why? Transit experts say it can largely come down to the expense. It could cost in the ballpark of a half-million dollars for a quad gate at a crossing, while installing a traditional gate is a fraction of the price.

The quad-gate improvements come amid a debate about the safety of rail crossings, sparked by a rash of people hurt or killed on tracks this year. Having quad gates everywhere would be ideal, but the government doesn’t have the funds to do that, said Pei-Sung Lin, program director at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida.

“Ideally, we would all like to do that,” Lin said.

Overall, the number of four-quad gate systems nationwide is still relatively small, said Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration. Of 131,000 public railway crossings, only 862 have quad gates, he said.

The federal government does not tell local cities “what to do where,” he said. “The onus is on them. It’s not going to be something we advocate for. It’s not for us to say.”

It can be left up to cities to push for more of them to be installed. That’s what Boynton Beach did last month after two people were killed by trains within the span of a week.