A major cause of highway-railroad grade crossing accidents is attributed to vehicles driving around the traditional entrance-only crossing gates. As a result, there is great interest in so-called four-quadrant gate systems typically consisting of two pairs of entrance/exit gates providing a complete crossing barrier to prevent drivearound. Existing gate control systems are expensive to modify for four-quadrant gate operation, especially when required to incorporate methods of detecting vehicles stopped on the tracks.
The objective of this IDEA project was a fail-safe, microprocessor-based, application-specific controller that can directly interface to various vehicle detection schemes and will operate exit gate mechanisms and the currently-installed entrance gates.
This project developed and tested a four-quadrant gate control system based on a novel programmable controller. The product will be an integrated control system consisting of a simulation-design/verification tool, application-specific vital software generator, and solid state vital quad-gate crossing controller hardware. Existing techniques for on-crossing vehicle detection and approaching train detection will be supported to assure that vehicles will be given sufficient train warning and cannot be trapped within the crossing. A software-based application tool set to assist and streamline the design of individual applications of the controller was also developed.
The final report for this IDEA project can be found at:
