Mapping Canada’s railway crossings

On Wednesday, March 18, a boy on a motorized bicycle was struck and killed at the Alexandra Avenue railway crossing in Mississauga. The tragedy, which occurred despite properly-working lights and gates at the three-track crossing, is a reminder of how important rail safety can be. Despite decades of “Operation Lifesaver” safety awareness campaigns, police enforcement, and upgrades to high-risk railway crossings, these tragedies continue to occur. Deaths on Canada’s railways affect many lives, including the victim’s family and friends, as well as the train crew, who can not brake the train in time. When these collisions happen, they can also tie up rail passengers and goods movement for many hours as emergency responders do their work and an investigation takes place.

This particular crossing, near Cawthra Avenue and Lakeshore Road, sees up to 125 GO Transit and VIA Rail passenger trains daily; the three-track corridor is one of the busiest stretches of railway in Canada. The Alexandra Ave. crossing was also ranked as the 21st riskiest in the country in a Transport Canada list of nearly 25,000 road-rail intersections. Of the top 25 railway crossings ranked by risk in Canada, 14 are owned by Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of GO Transit. At the very top of the list is another Mississauga railway crossing, where the GO Lakeshore West corridor meets Lorne Park Road.

According to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, between the years 1999 to 2022, 630 people were killed and 774 people were seriously injured due to collisions with trains at grade crossings, an average of 26 per year. In most instances (69%) those who were killed were in motor vehicles, with pedestrians and cyclists making up the remainder.

The railway crossing inventory, last published in June 2021, ranks grade crossings according to their risk using GradeX, an internal analysis tool. Relative risk of each crossing is based on several factors, including historical accident data, train speeds, traffic volumes, sight lines at crossings, crossing protection features, and the local built environment to determine the level of collision risk. Fields include location (road crossing and railway subdivision/mile), type of protection (passive, with just an “X” crossbuck sign, or active, with lights, bells, or gates), number of collisions in the last five years since the dataset was compiled, speed limits, and traffic estimates.

With this information, railways and road authorities can then work to improve the crossing to reduce the risk, or construct a grade separation to eliminate the risk. For example, the Burloak Drive crossing of the GO Lakeshore West Corridor and number 5 on the Transport Canada list, is currently being replaced with an underpass.

The Transport Canada list is comprehensive, but it is not perfect, nor is it complete. The Ontario Northland Railway, whose tracks extend north from North Bay through Northeastern Ontario, is conspicuously missing. Several crossings in the map, mostly private crossings, do not have the correct latitude and longitudes. Several abandoned railways, including the Orangeville-Brampton and Barrie-Collingwood (west of Angus) still appear, as do long-decommissioned crossings of industrial spurs. The risk ranking also changes. In a 2016 CBC News article, the Melbourne Road CN crossing west of London, Ontario was ranked fourth riskiest. In the more recent dataset available online, it is ranked 341th, even though there were no physical changes to the railway crossing visible in Google Streetview from 2009 through 2023.

I created a complete interactive map of all railway crossings; it can be found here.

The Lorne Park Road crossing is interesting for several reasons. After many years as a stop on the CN mainline, it was briefly a GO Transit station, with commuter train service only for its first year in 1967-1968. The two-lane road crosses the three-track railway at approximately a 30-degree angle; immediately to the north of the tracks is the intersection with Birchview Drive, which is parallel to the tracks. That intersection is controlled only with a stop sign, with pedestrians crossing the street at a wide angle with no marked crosswalk. The same number of trains that cross Alexandra Avenue also cross at Lorne Park Road, making it a busy crossing, and motor and pedestrian traffic is higher, as Lorne Park Road is a busier collector street with adjacent commercial properties. To its credit, however, Metrolinx recently upgraded the crossing, with enhanced pedestrian gates that prevent access when the railway crossing lights are activated.

A 2022 City of Mississauga-commissioned report by HDR recommended that the Lorne Park crossing be studied for future grade separation (it also recommended a more detailed study into closing the Alexandra Avenue crossing along with an Ogden Avenue grade separation), given the high number of train crossings, expected to increase with future GO Transit service expansion.

The level crossing ranked second in the list is the CN Dundas Subdivision crossing of Egerton Street in London. At Egerton Street, there are six tracks across two separate signaled crossings, as it is at the entrance to CN’s London yard. Egerton Street, with two traffic lanes, is also a marked cycling route, with painted bike lanes along the collector street. The third crossing in the list is Scarborough Golf Club Road at the three track GO Lakeshore East Corridor.

Building new overpasses or underpasses can be expensive and disruptive, especially in older urban environments where space is at a premium. Closing crossings completely can disconnect communities, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, who may have to travel much longer distances or use dangerous roads to get to their destinations. But they are often necessary for ensuring safe, frequent, and speedy train service. In the meantime, upgrading existing crossing and minimizing risk, along with continued education, is the way to go.