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Palo Alto’s Churchill Avenue rail crossing is now equipped with artificial intelligence technology that officials believe will improve safety by reducing collisions.
RailSentry, a technology by Missouri-based company Herzog, was installed at Churchill on March 12 and 13, Navi Dhaliwal, Caltrain’s government and community affairs manager, said at a March 18 meeting of the City Council Rail Committee. After roughly a monthlong learning period at Churchill, the technology is in use, though it is still being fine-tuned to ensure it is working according to the needs of the crossing, Mike Meader, Caltrain’s chief safety officer, said in an interview.
Meader said two high-definition closed-circuit television cameras at the crossing are working in tandem with lidar – a sensing method that uses pulses of laser light to determine the presence, shape and distance of objects – to detect and distinguish between people, vehicles, animals and more.
Through geofencing, the technology applies virtual perimeters to areas of the crossing and tracks, Meader said. Each area is subject to specific rules regarding what should and shouldn’t enter it. For example, if a person shows up for more than a couple of seconds in an area that is meant only for trains, the system will send out an alert, Meader said.
The system is monitored 24 hours a day by a security operations center, which contacts Caltrain if action needs to be taken, Meader added.
The technology is a step up from the city’s existing railway cameras, which don’t have the help of AI or lidar to identify objects, City Council member Pat Burt said in an interview. RailSentry has “advanced machine learning based analysis, not just the raw sensing,” said Burt, who chairs the council’s Rail Committee and is on Caltrain’s board of directors.
RailSentry “learns how cars behave and allows us to identify further improvements that can be made,” Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said at a Caltrain board meeting May 1.
RailSentry has already taught Caltrain officials more about how drivers act at rail crossings.
“One of the things we’ve learned from RailSentry is that there are a wider range of driver behaviors than we were aware of, as we’re seeing a lot more people making small errors and correcting, where before we generally only heard from people who got themselves stuck,” Dan Lieberman, a Caltrain public information officer, said in an email.
Caltrain, which runs from San Francisco to Gilroy and which has recently electrified its train fleet and expanded service, is rolling out RailSentry based on each crossing’s risk.
There were more than 230 vehicle-track incursions in which a tow truck was required to get a vehicle off the tracks on Caltrain’s corridor between 2020 and April 23, according to Caltrain data and Lieberman. Over 70% of the incursions took place at just eight grade crossings, the data shows. The crossing with the most incursions during that time period was Churchill, with 34.
Palo Alto has a history of collisions, including student suicides, at and near Caltrain crossings.
Between 2008 and September 2020, there were eight fatal incidents in which a train hit a vehicle or pedestrian at a Palo Alto grade crossing, according to data analyzed by the Expanded Community Advisory Panel, a group that met from 2019 to 2021 to analyze Palo Alto rail crossings and make recommendations to the City Council.
News reports show that at least eight people have died in train collisions in Palo Alto since 2020, with three of the deaths occurring at or near the Churchill crossing and the most recent one taking place March 4 near Churchill. And Churchill comes in ninth in the state on the California Public Utilities Commission’s grade separation priority list, as noted in a document that the commission filed last year. South Palo Alto’s Meadow Drive and Charleston Road crossings come in 12th and 13th on the list, respectively.
Seeking solutions
Yet the city has struggled to come up with an adequate solution to address the safety problem. The city’s ultimate goal is grade separation, the realignment of a rail crossing so that roads and tracks no longer intersect. But costs for such projects have “exploded” in recent years, Burt said.
And to further complicate matters, the city has no clear consensus on the best design for grade separations for Churchill.
In June, the City Council advanced a plan to build an underpass for cars at the Churchill crossing, despite opposition from residents who live near the tracks, many of whom were concerned about their properties being taken via eminent domain, the Palo Alto Weekly previously reported. Even if the council proceeds with this option, it would have to find a way to fund the project, which has a project cost of between $260 million and $320 million, according to a 2024 estimate from the city’s engineering consultants.
The Expanded Community Advisory Panel had recommended closing Churchill to cars at Alma Street, though that recommendation received pushback from many residents in the Southgate neighborhood who complained it would inhibit their ability to get around town.
Given these financial and political challenges, Palo Alto is prioritizing its Meadow and Charleston crossings for separation.
“Those alone will be a very big challenge,” Burt said.
Meanwhile, Caltrain and cities along the corridor are evaluating other changes that are less disruptive and expensive to improve safety at the rail crossings. RailSentry is just one piece of the puzzle, officials said.
The technology is being installed alongside enhancements such as pavement markers, signage and paint striping to better guide drivers and upgraded fencing to keep people off the tracks.
Since the addition of solar markers – which light up the road at night like a runway – at the Churchill crossing, among other measures, no drivers have tried to turn down the tracks, Meader said.
Caltrain is also working to make sure navigation apps are giving drivers clear directions at rail crossings. Google Maps and Waze have already refined their directions and Caltrain is currently working with Apple Maps on the issue, Burt said.
Burt and others said no one measure, including RailSentry, will solve all safety problems.
“RailSentry is an important addition to a whole bunch of measures that, in the aggregate, we believe will have a very positive impact,” Burt said. “No one of them is a panacea, and even altogether, they don’t completely solve our problems, but the experience in Burlingame has been that they’ve had a very favorable impact, and we anticipate that’ll be something similar here.”
Additionally, construction is scheduled to start this summer on the Churchill Avenue Enhanced Bikeway Project, which will include safety improvements along Churchill, according to the city. The project includes extending the existing bike path on Churchill from Castilleja Avenue to the Stanford Perimeter Trail, adding high visibility crosswalks and lighting improvements at Castilleja, restriping and repaving Churchill and adding landscaping improvements, among other enhancements, according to the project plans.
Lessons from Burlingame
The first Caltrain crossing to have RailSentry installed was Broadway in Burlingame, which got the technology in December, followed by Churchill in March. 11 vehicle-track incursions that required the use of a tow truck took place at Broadway between 2020 and April 23, according to Caltrain data. The crossing is the California Public Utilities Commission’s highest priority for grade separation in the state.
“The Broadway crossing, for probably the last 20 years, has been one of the most dangerous intersections in California,” Burlingame City Council member Donna Colson said in an interview. “In the last probably eight years, it’s definitively been the worst, No. 1.”
Colson said the intersection is busy, with tens of thousands of cars crossing through it each day, and it has an unusually short entrance and exit.
“It’s easy for cars to get sort of stuck inside there if they aren’t familiar with the intersection and unaware of, you know, how maybe the signals might come down rapidly and close,” Colson said. “On occasion, people will make a turn onto the tracks thinking they’re making a turn onto a street but they’re on the tracks.”
At the May 1 meeting, Bouchard noted the apparent success of the technology at Broadway, where an average of three vehicles went outside the appropriate geofenced area per week before steps to improve safety, including the use of RailSentry, were taken this year.
“RailSentry is an important addition to a whole bunch of measures that, in the aggregate, we believe will have a very positive impact,”
pat burt, palo alto city council member
“I think it’s important to note that since January when we’ve installed this there has not been a, knock wood, single car that has turned down the right of way at Broadway Burlingame and that is a direct result of us being able to make changes there and the power of the AI tool that we’re using,” Bouchard said.
Colson noted Broadway has not had the technology for long and before it was installed there had been no collisions at the crossing for several months.
“It’s certainly a helpful improvement, and anything … we can do to promote safety around the rail and the intersection, we will definitely, you know, be happy to implement,” Colson said. “But I don’t think it’s the entire long-term solution.”
In Burlingame, Caltrain initially estimated grade separating the Broadway crossing would cost roughly $320 million, but the price tag went up to almost $900 million when the agency had a builder estimate the price, Colson said. The City Council is now looking at a scaled-back version of the project, but it is still projected to cost around $590 million, Colson said.
Colson added that other crossings that need to be grade separated, including Churchill, are being “put on the back burner” while officials work on the Broadway project.
“Because we’re the most dangerous, what happens is, you know, we’re sort of No. 1 on the list of priorities,” Colson said. “It causes a ripple effect throughout the entire railway.”
Other measures, though perhaps not as effective at preventing collisions as grade separation, are less costly and can be completed faster. Bouchard estimated RailSentry’s installation at Broadway, including licensing for two years, cost about $200,000.
“What we’re trying to do is, in the meantime, do everything we can to make at-grade crossings as safe and secure as possible, and to reduce the train noise from quiet zones or wayside horns, as well as hopefully increase the capacity,” Burt said.
In March, the city received permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to move forward with implementing a quiet zone near the city’s Menlo Park border, meaning trains won’t have to blare their horns when they are within 15 seconds of the Palo Alto Avenue rail crossing, the Weekly reported. Doing the same in south Palo Alto is proving more difficult, however, and may require the installation of four-quadrant gates at crossings.
Caltrain is next looking to install RailSentry at its 16th Street crossing in San Francisco, though a date has not yet been set, Bouchard said.
Burt said he has “good confidence” RailSentry “will do what it is able to do, which is not prevent all intrusions everywhere.”
“But certainly it is a very positive step forward,” Burt said.
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