FAIRFIELD, Ohio — Fairfield City Council formalized an intergovernmental agreement Monday that officials hope will lead to the elimination of an at-grade railroad crossing on Symmes Road.
The agreement with the Butler County Transportation Improvement District allows the county agency to formally act on the city’s behalf for the Symmes Road Railroad Crossing Elimination (RCE) Project. This agreement comes after the county TID last year received $3 million in grant funds for Fairfield through an inaugural Federal Railroad Administration RCE program.
The grant is 80% of the initial phase of work for the Symmes Road project, which is less than a mile west of Ohio 4 in the northern part of the city. The grant money will help pay for the engineering and development plans to build the overpass and close the crossing on North Gilmore Road, making the section of road south of Symmes Road into a dual no outlet.
The city’s match will be $750,000 of the $3.75 million initial phase.
Butler County TID in December requested the FRA give pre-award authority for the Fairfield project so it can complete planning and project development, such as preliminary engineering, administration work (like scheduling and budgeting), an environmental review, and a feasibility study on North Gilmore Road.
The FRA’s RCE grant program has awarded more than $570 million for 63 projects addressing hundreds of at-grade crossings in 32 states, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Fairfield was one of only two Ohio cities to receive this funding in its inaugural round.
The Symmes Road Grade Separation Project is similar to what the city of Hamilton did in 2018 with the South Hamilton Crossing. That overpass eliminated an at-grade crossing to allow traffic to get to and from Ohio 4 unimpeded via Grand Boulevard. Though it is likely years away, this Fairfield project is expected to cost between $30 million to $40 million with the lion’s share expected to be federal and state funding, said Fairfield Public Works Director Ben Mann.
He said the city will apply for construction funds in the next couple of years, and though there are several types of funding sources at the state and federal levels, most of which the money Fairfield and the county TID will seek are expected to be federal funds.
The project is not just an overpass of the railroad at Symmes Road. Just as with the South Hamilton Crossing project in Hamilton, there will be a need for some property acquisition and road improvements, including a widening of Symmes Road from North Gilmore to Ohio 4.
The reasons for this overpass are several, including foremost the number of trains that use these tracks. In addition to the 35 to 40 trains that have historically traveled through the city daily, Fairfield officials say a growing number of stopped trains block the thousands of vehicles that use Symmes Road.
An average of 14,400-plus vehicles cross the tracks every day, according to the city.
The Biden Administration’s Investing in America agenda created the RCE program designed to improve safety by making it easier to get around railroad tracks either with grade separations, closing at-grade crossings, and improving existing at-grade crossings where train tracks and roads intersect. In 2022, more than 2,000 highway-rail crossing collisions in the U.S. occurred, and more than 30,000 reports of blocked crossings were submitted to FRA’s public complaint portal.
If the overpass happens and the North Gilmore Road crossing closes, there will be nearly 4.5 miles between at-grade crossings in Fairfield. Making North Gilmore a dual no-outlet on either side of the railroad tracks will require some traffic re-routing onto Busway Lane and improvements within the city’s roadway network near Symmes and North Gilmore roads.
Mann said they “expect to get the grant agreement pretty soon,” explaining it could be in March or April when it’s in place.
By the time the grant agreement is in place, Mann said they believe a consultant on the project will be contracted. The Butler County TID is seeking letters of interest from possible consultants through Jan. 30. It’s expected a consultant will be selected sometime in February and a contract in place by late March or early April.
Fairfield explored options for a separated crossing in 2008, but the project did not move forward because of a lack of viable funding sources at that time. New funding sources at the federal and state levels have allowed the city and Butler County TID to advance this project.
Other separated railroad crossings in Fairfield are along Ohio 4, Bypass Ohio 4, Port Union Road and Muhlhauser Road, and there’s a separated railroad crossing at Holden Boulevard at the Fairfield-Hamilton border.
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