klepZ RailContext

Crossings / Washington / Seattle

Seattle
Washington.

Public crossings123at grade, on the FRA inventory
With gates11%99 with no active device
Under a whistle ban5as last filed by the railroad
Reported incidents42Form 57, since 2016

The federal crossing inventory lists 123 public at-grade railroad crossings in Seattle, WA, operated by 3 railroads. 48 of them carry more than one track.

Who runs the track

Union Pacific Railroad Company operates 59 of the crossings here, 48% of the total, ahead of BNSF Railway Company at 44.

Train services crossing these streets: freight (123), intercity (9) and commuter (4).

RailroadCrossingsShare
Union Pacific Railroad Company5948%
BNSF Railway Company4436%
Ballard Terminal Railroad Co LLC2016%

How much traffic is reported

The busiest crossing at Spokane St Wbd on BNSF Railway Company is credited with 50 train movements a day; the middle of the range across all 123 is 0. These are counts the operating railroad reported to the FRA, not measurements, and a crossing's figure can be several years old.

The highest timetable speed recorded at any crossing here is 50 mph.

Warning devices

14 of the 123 crossings carry gates and 10 have flashing lights without gates. 99 (80%) have neither, which means crossbucks, a stop sign, or no marking the inventory records at all. The inventory describes equipment, not how a crossing performs.

Horns and quiet zones

5 of the crossings (4%) are recorded under a whistle ban. A quiet zone is not silence: horns still sound for emergencies, track workers and at the engineer's discretion, and the status in the inventory is only as current as the last railroad filing.

Incident history

Form 57 records 42 reported incidents at these crossings since 2016, involving 5 deaths and 5 injuries. Incident counts follow traffic and exposure as much as anything about a crossing itself.

  • Holgate Street — 7 reported incidents
  • S Spokane St Eb — 4 reported incidents
  • South Fidalgo Street — 4 reported incidents
  • Broad Street — 3 reported incidents
  • South Lucile Street/8th Avenue South — 3 reported incidents

What this page is not

This is a summary of a federal inventory, not a measurement and not a rating. RailContext does not score crossings, streets or towns, and nothing here says a crossing is safe or unsafe, or that a neighbourhood is quiet or loud. Train counts are estimates the operating railroad filed, sometimes years ago, and a quiet zone does not guarantee silence.

To see the individual crossings nearest one address rather than a whole city, use the address check.

Other Washington cities on the inventory

All Washington cities →