Every place where a road or a path meets a railroad in the United States is meant to have a federal record. Those records sit in one national database, the U.S. DOT National Highway-Rail Crossing Inventory, kept by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Rail Crossing Atlas is built on it, and so is much of the planning work done by states, cities and railroads. This note explains who puts the records there, how often they have to be brought up to date, and what the changes look like from one week to the next.
One record for every crossing
Each crossing has an inventory number, often called its DOT crossing number. The number identifies the crossing in every later report about it, from a change of warning equipment to its closure. Everything else in the record hangs from it: where the crossing is, which railroad operates through it, how many trains and vehicles use it, and what signs or signals stand at it.
The record is filed on a single form, the U.S. DOT Crossing Inventory Form (Form FRA F 6180.71), filled in as FRA's Guide for Preparing Highway-Rail Crossing Inventory Forms describes. The public dataset on data.transportation.gov publishes each record's fields as columns and names the box of the form each one comes from, so a column such as the revision date can be traced back to Box A of the form.
The inventory covers more than the crossings a driver sees. It also holds records for crossings where the railroad passes over or under the road, for crossings that serve only a path, and for crossings that have been closed. Rail Crossing Atlas shows the crossings reported open and at track level: 203,136 of them in the FRA inventory of 3 November 2026, of which 126,083 are public.
Who files the record
Since 2015 the reporting duties have been written into federal regulation, in 49 CFR Part 234, Subpart F, titled "Highway-Rail and Pathway Crossing Inventory Reporting". The subpart was published on 6 January 2015 (80 FR 786) and amended on 10 June 2016 (81 FR 37533).
The duty falls mainly on one railroad per crossing, which the rules call the primary operating railroad: the railroad that owns or maintains the track through the crossing. The rules settle the cases where that is shared, so that each crossing still has one railroad answerable for its record. In practice:
- The primary operating railroad submits the record on the inventory form, or its electronic equivalent, following FRA's guide.
- Class I railroads, the largest freight railroads, must submit their data electronically.
- A state agency may submit data on a railroad's behalf, once the railroad has told FRA in writing.
- When a new crossing is built, the primary operating railroad obtains an inventory number for it and submits its first record.
- Crossings that had never been reported had to be given inventory numbers and records by 9 August 2016.
State agencies can play a large part too. For each update the dataset records the type of agency that reported it, a railroad or a state, from Box B of the form.
The terms the rules define
Section 234.401 defines the words the rest of the subpart relies on. They also explain what a record's type and status fields mean.
- Public crossingA crossing where the road or path approaches are under the jurisdiction of, and maintained by, a public authority, and are open to public travel.
- Private crossingAny crossing that is not public. The definition works by exclusion: a crossing on a farm lane or a plant entrance road is private unless a public authority maintains it and it is open to public travel.
- Pathway crossingAn authorized crossing for travel that is not by vehicle and is not part of a road, such as a walking or cycling path.
- Closed crossingA crossing where the tracks, or every road or path approach, have been physically removed. A grade-separated crossing that has been removed also counts as closed.
- Temporary crossingA crossing meant to last no more than six months, such as one built for a construction job.
Two clocks: three years and three months
The subpart sets two kinds of deadline. One is a regular cycle that applies to every open crossing at track level. The other starts when something specific happens at a crossing.
The three-year cycle. Under section 234.409, each primary operating railroad must submit up-to-date and accurate data for every crossing it operates through at least every three years. The three years run from the railroad's most recent submission for that crossing, or from 9 August 2016 if that is later. Grade-separated and closed crossings are left out of this cycle. Where two or more railroads run trains through the same crossing on separate tracks, each one must update certain listed fields of the form on the same three-year cycle.
The three-month deadline. Section 234.411 lists changes that must reach the inventory within three months of the date they happen, for changes on or after 10 June 2016:
- the sale of all or part of a crossing;
- the closure of a crossing;
- at a public highway-rail grade crossing, a change in the crossing surface;
- at a public highway-rail grade crossing, a change in warning device.
A "change in warning device" has a precise meaning: adding or removing a crossbuck, a yield sign, a stop sign, flashing lights or gates. Equipment put up for less than six months does not count.
The two clocks explain a pattern that surprises many first-time readers. A closure or a new set of gates should appear within a few months, while a figure such as the typical number of trains each day may be as old as the last full update, up to three years before. The record is the railroad's latest report, not a live measurement.
One week of changes
Rail Crossing Atlas compares the inventory with the previous week's copy and has published the result each week since 26 September 2026. In the week of 26 October 2026, 2,404 records changed. The changes fell into these groups:
- train counts updated: 1,779 records;
- road traffic counts updated: 712 records;
- more warning devices listed than the week before: 179 records;
- fewer warning devices listed: 117 records;
- new records: 19;
- other field changes: 431 records.
One record can change in several ways at once, so the groups add up to more than the number of records that changed. Read each group on its own, and do not add them together.
Most of the movement is counts being refreshed. That fits the three-year cycle: in any week some railroads and states send periodic updates, and the train and traffic figures in those records move. A record that lists more warning devices than last week may describe new equipment at the crossing, or it may correct an older record that left something out. The inventory itself does not say which, so a change in a record is a reason to look closer rather than proof that anything changed on the ground that week.
Fifty years of record changes
FRA also publishes a historical inventory that keeps earlier versions of each record. Counted field by field, it holds 5,340,921 changes since 1975, in the version updated on 27 October 2026. Among them are the dates on which crossings were reported closed and, less often, reported open again.
Those dates come with a caution that applies to every date in the inventory: they refer to reports, not confirmed construction dates. A crossing closed in one year may have been reported years later, and a cluster of reports in one year can reflect a records clean-up rather than work in the field.
What this means when you read a record
A few habits make the inventory much easier to use.
- Look at the revision date first. It tells you when the record was last updated, and therefore how old its counts may be.
- Treat the record as a report. It says what the railroad or state submitted. If it differs from what you see at the crossing, the record may simply be waiting for its next update.
- Read a blank as unknown. A missing value means nothing was reported, not that the answer is zero.
- Check the history. The weekly changes and the record history show what moved and when it was reported.
- Cite the number and the date. When you quote a record, give the inventory number and the date of the inventory you read, because the next update can change it.
Rail Crossing Atlas shows the weekly changes on its weekly changes page and sets out its sources and limits on its about the data page. Its short guide, the FRA crossing inventory explained, covers the basics in a few minutes. The rules quoted in this note are on 49 CFR Part 234, Subpart F.
Sources
Figures are as the source showed them on the date given. Rail Crossing Atlas figures come from the FRA crossing inventory of the date stated in the text.
- 49 CFR Part 234, Subpart F: Highway-Rail and Pathway Crossing Inventory Reporting (Cornell Legal Information Institute). Read 3 November 2026.
- Crossing Inventory Data, Current: the FRA dataset on data.transportation.gov. Read 3 November 2026.
- Rail Crossing Atlas: weekly changes to the crossing records. Read 3 November 2026.
- Rail Crossing Atlas: home page, crossings in each state. Read 3 November 2026.
- Rail Crossing Atlas: about the data. Read 3 November 2026.
- Rail Crossing Atlas guide: the FRA crossing inventory explained. Read 3 November 2026.