Episode 58 of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast explores how transportation agencies are working to improve safety at railroad crossings and reduce collisions between vehicles and wildlife. The hosts discuss Operation Lifesaver’s See Tracks? Think Train® campaign, highlighting how transit agencies are using digital messaging and station safety initiatives to remind drivers and pedestrians about the dangers of railroad crossings. The conversation also examines grade crossing elimination, potential technology solutions for identifying hazards ahead of trains and the continued need for public awareness.

The episode then turns to wildlife crossings, including overpasses, underpasses and fencing designed to help animals safely navigate highways and reconnect fragmented habitats. Gavin, Jessica and Brandon examine projects in Colorado, Wyoming and California, the role of federal funding in expanding these structures and how thoughtful design can reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions. The discussion also considers the importance of migration patterns, collaboration with wildlife conservationists and the need to balance wildlife infrastructure investments with other transportation priorities.

Here is a transcript from the episode:

GJ: And welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins, head of content for Roads and Bridges. And with me, as always, we got Jessica Parks, staff writer for Roads and Bridges, and we have Brandon Lewis, associate editor of Mass Transit and just an all around great guy. How you guys doing?

BL: Good morning, everybody. Listeners, watchers. Gavin, it's a Tuesday. You guys know what that means. It's podcast day, baby.

GJ: You know what also it is? It is deer mating season, and that means that our roads and some bridges, but mostly our roads are filled with, not filled, what's the word? They're a little bit more dangerous lately in the fall because of this part of deer mating season, because the deer, they're crossing roads to go mate the males. They're not looking both ways. And so today we're going to be talking about wildlife crossings, the importance of them, and we're also going to be talking about rail safety at those intersections. Right, Brandon, that's what you're going to be bringing us?

BL: Correct.

GJ: Okay. All right. Well, why don't we start with rail? And Brandon, why don't you just dive in?

BL: Yeah. So basically every fall, Operation Lifesaver, which is this agency that started this program, it's called Rail Safety Week, and it turned into See Tracks? Think Train® Week in 2016 and basically what this is, is it is a program that launched alongside Operation Lifesaver Canada and the Mexican Association of Railroads that help prevent tragedies around railroad tracks and trains. And so last year, the Federal Railroad Administration cited that for 2025, approximately 2,273 collisions occur every year at public and private railroad crossings, resulting in unfortunately 286 fatalities and 766 injuries. So in honor of protecting railroad safety, a ton of public transit agencies, they come together every single year, and they promote the importance of obviously being safe and whether you are on a vehicle or whether you are walking with these railroad crossings. Some of the examples this year include the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and Keolis North America, who started posting rail safety messages on digital screens. You have New Jersey Transit, who did safety blitzes at select stations where agency safety employees interacted with customers to remind them of safe procedures. And this is something that as more rail is being implemented across the country, and we're seeing rail lines being built, this is something that's going to continue to be an ongoing issue.

GJ: Brandon, do your statistics account for all the accidents that occur when a good guy is trying to get away from the bad guy and the bad guy rams their car at the intersection and pushes them onto the tracks as the train is coming?

BL: No, it actually doesn't.

GJ: It doesn't?

BL: No, it just qualifies for anybody that is already on the track or near the track as the train approaches them.

GJ: Okay. Because I can think of a few movies where that happens and every time I stop at a rail intersection, I look both ways, but I'm also checking that rear view for the bad guys.

BL: I'm the guy who, if I was a driver, I'd be beeping the horn 100%.

GJ: Beeping the horn for what? For the train to hurry up?

BL: Yeah. Come on, I got to get somewhere.

GJ: Some of those trains are miles long. If you are stuck there, you're just watching just miles and miles of trains just go by. You might as well just turn around.

BL: Well, and the other thing is if you're behind someone, and they're asleep at the wheel, and they're just sitting there, and the train has already come and passed, it's like, ‘Okay, it's time to go’, and they're not moving.

GJ: Yeah. What do you think, Jess? Rail safety.

JP: Yeah. I mean, I know when I lived in Long Island, they were working to eliminate a lot of grade crossings, which is where cars meet trains at an on-road intersection, so they're trying to either lift the rail line or lower the car passage, and I think that's a really good idea because I mean in Long Island, you used to lose a lot of time with the trains. It's such a dense area and the train goes all over the island, so you could hit three train crossings in one trip.

GJ: Now we have the technology. We could put a sign at the intersection to let you know how many minutes away the next train is, right? It could be like, say the next train in 17 minutes.

BL: Yeah. I mean, theoretically we could, right? There's a lot of signage that are going up right now at these crossings, basically telling people how to not get in the way of these trains, but there's no signage per se to say the next train is coming when.

JP: But why does it matter? It only really matters if you hit the train at the same time. I don't need to know it's coming in 15 minutes. Maybe if I'm going somewhere, and I'm going to be coming back the same way.

GJ: I think some towns it would be really important, but not all towns.

BL: I think it matters where you're at, whether it's urban or rural, depending on how many traffic lights there are in the area. I mean, depending on how many stop signs there are. I mean, some people just may not even think. I mean, you may be coming up on a railroad track, and you may not even be aware that it's coming up.

JP: I think it'd be good to know, I guess if a train's crossing, how much longer it needs to cross and then it's like, ‘Oh, it needs another 10 minutes. It's already crossing, but it's going to take another 10 minutes for the whole train to cross’.

BL: That would be valuable information if I'm a driver, and if I know another way, and I can avoid the railroad track altogether, right?

JP: Yeah.

GJ: Well, first off, I would never want to be, that is one of the last things that I want to ever experience in my life is either being hit by a train or seeing someone or something being hit by a train. That would be awful.

BL: I agree, but the sad part is, and that's why this Railroad Safety Week, it's why we talk about safety so much in the industry. I feel like you hear stories about people getting hit by trains specifically a lot more than we should. It's a novel concept, right? Don't get hit by a train, but yet clearly it's still happening.

GJ: Well, so according to the National Safety Council, railroad deaths totaled 959 in 2025, and they were 924 in 2024. So somewhere between 900 and 960 people die in railroad related incidents each year. And the crossings with intersections and cars, it's a huge part of it. It's shocking that it's that large.

JP: I agree.

GJ: I don't understand how it happens.

BL: Well, that and then also the difference between passenger rail and freight rail, the freight rail that you guys see they're carrying a bunch of cargo and all that stuff, the part of the industry that Mass Transit actually does not cover. Those trains are actually a lot longer as opposed to your MBTA or MTA passenger rail trains.

GJ: Right. Yeah, those are the ones I was talking about that can be miles and miles long. No, those are the ones, Brandon, that you want to hop on. You're going to want to hop on the freight ones because they don't know that you're there.

BL: Yeah.

GJ: Jess, have you ever hopped on a train?

JP: Nope. Never hopped on a train. I've gone between rail cars in New York City where you're seeing the rail.

GJ: Oh yeah. You switch train cars.

JP: Yeah, which it's kind of scary, and they tell you not to do it.

BL: Yeah, no, that is scary, especially depending on where you're at. I mean, a lot of these trains now have a low floor. They're easier to get in and out of, but the older models, the distance between the platform and the train is a legitimate jump.

GJ: Right. It really is.

JP: I was always so scared. I used to be a strap hanger for a long time when I lived in New York City. And yeah, I used to take the train to and from work every day, and I would always get so nervous I was going to drop something in between. I was always so nervous, and I was so nervous someone's going to push you into the train, so you have to stand sideways to the platform. That’s what they say to do.

GJ: Yeah. So one thing that we should mention, the grade crossing fatalities have been trending downward over time, isn't that correct?

BL: Yes.

GJ: So we're getting better at it. Do you guys ever follow that contest to see which bear is the fattest bear in Alaska? Or is it Alaska?

JP: Yeah, fat bear.

GJ: The one that has won the most, I forget the name of the bear, but it's this massive bear, and it's been hit by a train twice and survived.

BL: Oh my God, I am unaware of it.

GJ: See how big it is? It just gets hit in the side and bounces off.

JP: It keeps running. It's like a mutant.

GJ: It's scary. What's scarier to you, Brandon? A bear or a train?

BL: Good question. I would probably say a bear. I don't know why wild animals scare me, man.

GJ: Yeah, bears are terrifying.

JP: I'm so scared of bears. When I used to go up to New Hampshire for vacation, they'd be all over the place, and they could just open your door to your house.

GJ: Should we transition this podcast into a bear podcast? Or maybe we should just have a segment just called Bear Watch.

JP: Yeah. Bear Watch.

BL: I feel like, and I'm going to date myself a little bit here. I feel like it's that old episode of SpongeBob where it's a sea bear, and it's like, ‘No, it can't be an oval. It has to be a circle’.

JP: Yeah, that one was funny, and I just saw a video of the other day of this bear just opening a car door and getting in, and I swear it wasn’t AI.

GJ: They can open car doors?

JP: Yeah, I swear it wasn't AI. It was like, you are not safe in your car. Lock it if you see a bear.

GJ: Yeah. Oh my goodness. All right. So anything else we need to hit talking about the rail safety?

BL: No, I think that we covered it. I think a lot of these agencies, and we've talked about this a lot at Mass Transit. Gavin, you've talked about the last couple of years, the deaths either being the same or on railroad crossing specifically going down. Safety has been, and railroad crossing is a part of it, but in general overall, safety has been a massive, massive trend in transit overall in these last couple years.

GJ: Yeah. What if there was another technology solution to this? So what if the person, the conductor of the train had a screen on the train that showed them the next intersection coming up? And so there were video… I'm advocating for cameras.

BL: Here we go.

GJ: Yeah. But what if there were cameras at the intersections where there were rail crossings and maybe the conductor could see what was at the next intersection? So if someone passed out on the tracks or broke down on the tracks, that the conductor could know a few miles ahead, so they could start the process of slowing down.

BL: Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic idea.

GJ: Well, let's start it. All right. Let's not publish this episode, and let's start our business, and we're going to put screens in every train. That's our new company, Brandon.

JP: Is it going to show up on the windshield like a video of the next intersection or is this going to be a screen in the dashboard?

GJ: It could be whatever you want. I mean, we have unlimited technology in this hypothetical scenario, so we'll just do whatever we want. It's on the screen. It could be on their glasses for all I care. Let's give every train conductor Meta glasses, and they're alerted that way.

JP: I do not want to involve Meta in our business venture.

GJ: Oh yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Mark Zuckerberg will kill us. It'll take all our money. All right. Okay. Let's transition to wildlife crossings because this situation is actually a huge problem. A friend of mine actually hit and killed a deer Saturday night, and she was really shaken and put a dent into her. She drives an SUV, she dented the car, and she was just like, ‘Yeah, the deer's dead’. And so it's pretty scary. And just a couple inches more, maybe the deer goes into the windshield, maybe she loses control. Anything can happen when you put that kind of situation onto the road, and it's a direct reflection of us building infrastructure in wildlife and creating more mobility for us. So there are roughly, there's no total official list, but there are approximately 1,500 wildlife crossing structures in the United States, and there's different types of structures, so they include above-grade overpasses, below-grade underpasses, culverts, modified bridges paired with guiding fences and the states that are doing them the best, Colorado is just ahead of the game. Colorado and its partners have built more than 40 wildlife underpasses and three overpasses. The most famous, I believe, is... Do you know the name of it, Jess? I think it is the Greenland.

JP: I think that's it.

GJ: Yeah. That's the I-25 Greenland overpass. Yeah, that's what it's called. Idaho has an overpass that's very famous, and there's more on the way.

JP: California is set to open one December 2nd. It's supposed to be that Wallace Annenberg overpass.

GJ: US 101. Yeah.

JP: Yeah. That'll connect the Santa Monica mountains, the habitats in the Santa Monica mountains with the northern habitats, and it's open December 2nd. That's California.

GJ: There's also one in Willard Springs Wildlife Overpass by I-17 in Arizona. Yeah. So I think what's going on now is we're seeing more and more popping up because we want to protect drivers from having accidents with deer, and we also want to protect the deer, and it's not just deer. There's all sorts of wildlife, raccoons, possum, all depending on where you live. Squirrels, rabbits. I feel like squirrels sometimes just commit suicide.

BL: They do. They just don't look.

JP: Oh, they definitely do.

GJ: Yeah. My mom told me that when I was a kid, she ran over a squirrel, and I was like, ‘Mom, you killed the squirrel’, and she was just like, ‘No, no, no. It was committing suicide’, trying to calm down young 10-year-old Gavin. ‘No, no, no, he wanted to die’. There's also a federal pipeline. So there are grants. There's the crossing pilot program in California has, there's $110 million to 19 projects in 17 states that the USDOT is funding a lot of it. And so have you guys, what do you think of this? Do you think that this is a good thing? Do you think that more states need to be investing in this? What are your thoughts?

JP: I think it's a really good thing. I mean, I recently wrote an article about Kentucky's deer collisions, and they had a seven-year high of 3,411 deer collisions.

GJ: Wow. 

JP: Yeah, in 2025. And nearly half of them occurred in October. What was it? It was November. November alone had 823 collisions.

BL: In a month. Wow.

JP: In one month. So I mean, that just really shows the staggering numbers.

GJ: It’s just shocking. What does that break down to minute? How many a minute?

JP: Yeah. Right? Yeah, I know. 3,411. I mean, it's probably one happening every 10 minutes or something like that.

GJ: Someone just hit a deer right now.

JP: Yeah, exactly. And probably in the October, November, December, the later months of the year, I mean, it gets smaller just because that's their mating season, and it's way more common. So I mean, that's staggering. It's not only impacting the deer, but people die in these collisions too. I mean, yeah.

GJ: Right. I saw a stat that said about 200 human deaths a year and over 26,000 injuries, and it's costing America $8 billion.

JP: Yeah. I saw something like that too. It's insane. So I know Wyoming is doing a lot of wildlife crossings. They're building... Because they also deal with pronghorn and mule deer. That makes sense. And they said that roughly there's a Trapper's Point corridor where they constructed overpasses and underpasses to serve a major pronghorn and mule deer migration corridor. They said roughly 2,000 to 3,000 pronghorn and 2,000 to 2,500 mule deer move through that corridor each spring and fall. I mean, there's these areas, migration corridors, that highways have broken up, and it's just for years and years you didn't do anything to try to mitigate or come up with a solution around that problem, so now we're kind of doing our due diligence of if we break up a migration area, we can't just ignore the problem that these animals have gone around for centuries, eras, so that's my thought on it.

GJ: What I think is really fascinating is just how beautiful the land bridges can be because you're building a structure and then you're planting grass and trees and brush, and you're basically giving them a bridge of woods over a highway, and it's very beautiful.

JP: Exactly. The wildlife Annenberg, wildlife crossing in California, that one is supposed to function as a habitat, and it's also like animals could just live on that bridge.

GJ: Yeah, it's really cool.

JP: Yeah, it's beautiful.

GJ: Colorado's Greenland overpass, so more than 100,000 vehicles a day use that stretch of I-25. And before the crossing system, there was about one wildlife vehicle crash a day during fall and spring migration. Colorado reports crash reduction around 90% in most cases where the crossings pair with fencing. 90% reduction. It's huge, And honestly, I would like to see more of this in Pennsylvania. Lots of woods.

JP: Indiana was a place that needed it because I'm telling you, when I drove through Indiana to get to Oklahoma, there was a lot of roadkill. A lot.

GJ: Yeah, it was insane. And also it cuts down on seeing roadkill. I do not like seeing carcasses on the side of the road.

JP: No. And I said so when I lived in Puerto Rico and then I moved back here, and I noticed when I moved back here, I mean, this is just a theory or something, but I just saw so much more roadkill than I ever remember seeing in my life. I don't know if it's getting worse or something like that, but I feel like in Massachusetts, it was like every mile I was seeing something. It was missing.

BL: Americans are angry.

JP: Yeah, exactly. And that's what you mentioned though, the fencing. It's not just the overpasses and underpasses. It's creating fencing to herd the animals to use these wildlife crossings. And then those have such technical parts of them too, because they have to create jump out areas because sometimes if they're already in the highway, you don't want the fencing to trap them in the highway either, so you have to come up with these areas where they can jump out.

GJ: I have seen that happen. I've seen a deer essentially trapped on a highway before and didn't know where to go. It's really sad.

JP: Yeah. So it's insane how it's not just the infrastructure itself, but you have to consider the migration patterns. You have to consider herding the animals, you have to consider the way they move and everything like that. So it's just such a big endeavor to do these and everything. You have to work with wildlife conservationists and everything like that. It's really interesting, I think.

GJ: Yeah, absolutely. So the money and design debates, so the pilot program's funding how oversubscribed it is and the 2026 renewal question. So Canadian researchers found that 71% of North American wildlife overpasses are narrower than recommended so are we building them correctly? That's something that I think is not something that we could really determine here, but it's a debate that's happening in the industry. Brandon, I'm wondering what your take on the policy and funding angle would be. How does this compete with transit and safety dollars in the next reauthorization? How do you think?

BL: Yeah, it's going to be interesting because there's already a debate within the public transit agency itself that rail specific funding is not already being allocated enough in this next surface transportation reauthorization, so I think obviously there's a huge focus on roads and bridges and highways, but hopefully not from our perspective, but it may come at a cost of little bit of public transit.

GJ: Yeah. So which would you rather see: An overpass or an underpass?

JP: Oh, an overpass. I mean, you get to see them from the highway. You could possibly see the animals and everything from driving along. I think that'd be cool. Yeah, it does seem like the underpasses are being used more frequently. I read there's another project in Wyoming, and they're building one overpass and then seven underpasses and fencing along roughly 30 miles. I do wish I should have looked into why you use an underpass or an overpass. Do you know any reason why?

GJ: I think it just depends on the geography.

BL: What costs more? Is there a cost difference?

JP: That's a great question.

GJ: It's a great question. I think it all just depends on the structure of the road and how it already is set up. Yeah. You know what I would like to do? I would love it, and if any of our listeners, please let us know if you are or someone you know is in the process of working on a land bridge. For Roads and Bridges, I would love to follow a land bridge from design to completion and visit the construction of it and report from the job site on an ongoing basis.

BL: Boots on the ground.

GJ: Yeah. I'd like to visit a land bridge job site a few times, and I'd actually like to write a book about it. I think that these are so important. I think a story on the creation of a land bridge, it would have to be somewhere unique, a Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, someplace like that. I think it would be really cool to tell that story from beginning to end and talk about the migration patterns and the benefits to the ecosystem and also the benefits to people and not crashing into an animal. Brandon, have you ever been in a car when a deer was hit?

BL: No, but trust me, I almost did. I've had stories of it because my grandma grew up in the 40s in Southern Alabama, and she was taught, ‘If you see a deer, gun it. Just run them over."

GJ: Run them over?

BL: Yeah. My whole childhood, all I heard, there's a story one day, she was on my way over to my house. She gets out of the car and goes, ‘Well, I ran a deer over on my way here’ like it was no big deal.

JP: Your Grandma sounds like an interesting woman.

BL: My mom was like, ‘What’? And she was like, ‘Yeah, just in the middle of the road, it wouldn't get away, so I just ran it over’.

GJ: When I started my career, I lived in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, which is in the south central part of the state near the Maryland border. And people told me that it was not uncommon for people who lived outside the town center. It was a very rural county, a very small newspaper where I was a sports writer, and people often told... They're very open about eating roadkill. If they hit a deer or if they saw someone hit a deer, instead of letting the deer die there on the road, if they had a truck, they would put the deer into the truck, kill it as humanely as they could if it was still alive and then take it home and get the venison. I hate to say that.

JP: It's not uncommon. That's what people do where I'm from.

GJ: Yeah, it's not uncommon.

JP: My dad's done it.

GJ: Yeah, it's not. It's joked about. Not a lot, but it is something that a lot of Americans have taken advantage of. It's like free meat on the side of the road.

JP: Oh yeah, go ahead.

GJ: I have hit two deer in my life. When I was in college, I used to drive a freezer truck delivering ice cream to convenience stores. I did it for just a short period of time, a couple of months. Brandon, I ate a lot of ice cream that summer. But I was driving a big truck, and I hit a deer with that, But I don't think I killed it. It was the situation I referenced earlier. It was trapped, and it couldn't get out and so I was able to slow down, and I just nudged, just kind of bumped it. The second time I was in a Jeep Cherokee, I used to drive a Jeep Cherokee for years, and I hit this car. I hit this deer, and I hit it in the backside and it flipped and then it kind of staggered off into a yard where it probably died. But yeah, so those are the two times I've seen deers get hit.

JP: I've literally hit a skunk once and then I think I hit a turtle recently. I felt really bad.

GJ: You know what? I am so glad you mentioned skunk. That is a massive problem. That's why we use the land bridges because there's nothing worse than someone running over a skunk, and it's stinking up the road for days.

JP: I felt really bad when I hit the turtle recently though.

GJ: What state were you in that you hit a turtle?

JP: In Oklahoma. Or a tortoise.

GJ: There's turtles crossing the road?

JP: Or a tortoise. I don't know if I hit a turtle or a tortoise. I have no idea.

GJ: Now when you hit it, did the shell zip across the road like at Super Mario Brothers?

JP: Yeah, it happened so fast. I just felt like I hit a big rock.

GJ: Oh, wow.

JP: It was not fun. I was with my new friends, and they're like, ‘You just ran over that turtle’, and I was like, ‘No, I know. I feel so bad’. I felt so bad, but I wanted to bring up one interesting thing. So in Long Island where I lived, you did not have deer. They were not really native to Long Island, but you would randomly get them in Long Island, and what was really interesting is that they had to have crossed a bridge to get there. They would either cross a bridge like the Verazano from Staten Island, or they would cross the Throgneck or the Washington Bridge or something like that, these major, major bridges. Oh my God. They'd have to travel through New York City from upstate and then go across a bridge. And so it was a big phenomenon whenever they were on the island.

GJ: Yeah. That's crazy. I live in the east end of Pittsburgh in the neighborhood of Highland Park, and Highland Park is a wooded area. I always see deer on my street. Last night when I went out to take my dog out before bed, there were deer in the yard across the street. It's so common that my dog does not even react to deer anymore.

JP: Oh, really? Moose will try to chase them.

GJ: Bob does not care. All right, so let's recap. What do we got here? We need increased safety at the rail crossings and also we need more land bridges, more overpasses, more wildlife bridges is what we're saying or underpasses to protect us and to protect the deer and other animals like turtles and skunks and squirrels and rabbits and anything else that moves, anything else that's furry. All right, so that does it for us on this episode. Brandon, who do we have to thank?

BL: We have to thank the great Karina Mazhukina for making us sound wonderful on audio and video. We also have to thank all the wildlife out there, and we got to thank our parent company, EndeavorB2B, for giving us this platform to host the ITP and talk about wildlife and bears and deer and animals and have a great time with my two wonderful co-hosts today.

GJ: That's one thing. I never want to hit a deer with a car. That would be terrible. You'd destroy your car.

JP: Yeah. I have luckily lived 32 years without doing it.

GJ: We got to thank the listeners. Thank you for listening to us ramble and rant. And please, if you or anyone you know is working on a wildlife bridge, please reach out to me. Please, gjenkins@endeavorb2b. And if you want to email the pod, that is [email protected]. All right, for Roads and Bridges, I'm Gavin Jenkins.

BL: I'm Brandon Lewis.

JP: And I'm Jessica Parks.

GJ: All right. We'll see you next week. Until then, goodbye.