FRA awards $1.24B to take rail crossings off US roads in 37 states

The US Department of Transportation has handed out $1.24 billion through the Federal Railroad Administration's Railroad Crossing Elimination (RCE) programme, split across 91 grants in 37 states. The announcement on Friday 30 October covers the FY 25-26 round, and the money goes to removing points where roads and railways meet at grade, closing crossings outright and upgrading the signals that link rail and road traffic.

The biggest named awards

USDOT picked out six projects in its release. The largest is $72 million for the Port Authority of Kansas City, which will remove three at-grade crossings in Kansas City, Missouri, with a single grade separation. Texas DOT gets $46 million for an overpass carrying RM 2871 over the Union Pacific line and Aledo Road in Fort Worth, and the City of Nampa, Idaho, gets $43 million for its Robinson Road and Greenhurst Road overpass.

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Not every award is for concrete and steel yet. Georgia DOT receives $31.7 million to upgrade preemption links between railroad equipment and traffic signals at about 31 high-risk crossings. Marana, Arizona, gets $6.4 million for development and design work on a future grade separation at Tangerine Road and I-10, and St. Louis County, Minnesota, gets $1.7 million to study four crossings on a Canadian National mainline. The full list of selections is on the FRA's project summaries page.

"The RCE grants announced today will provide communities nationwide with funding to make highway-rail grade crossings safer" David Fink, Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said the department had put nearly $10 billion into rail this year. The release also points back to a separate $2.3 billion Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) round covering 105 projects in 45 states and DC.

A second round of safety money the day before

On Thursday 29 October, USDOT also announced $1.01 billion for 297 projects through the Safe Streets and Roads for All programme, reaching all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Tribal lands. Much of it is planning and post-crash care, but the named awards include hard civil work: $13.7 million in Acworth, Georgia, for roundabouts, turn lanes, signals, drainage and pavement on three roads, and $28.7 million in Lexington County, South Carolina, that includes rail-crossing safety and roadway improvements.

What it means for contractors

Grade separations are classic heavy civil packages: bridge structures, approach embankments, utility relocation, drainage and staged traffic control, usually with a railroad as a third party on the job. Grant awards are the start of the process, not the letting, so most of this work will reach bid schedules over the next few seasons once design and railroad agreements are done. For contractors with rail-adjacent bridge experience, it adds to a pipeline that doesn't depend on the stalled multi-year highway bill.

What it means for hiring

In our view, grade separation work favours contractors with people who have managed railroad coordination, flagging and track-protection rules. Those project managers and superintendents are a smaller pool than general bridge PMs.
With dozens of smaller awards spread across 37 states, we'd expect regional bridge and site contractors, not just national firms, to need estimators who can price railroad-adjacent risk.
Design-stage grants like Marana's point to work several years out, which is a reason to build preconstruction capacity now rather than when the bids appear.

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