Identify funding opportunities
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Once a railroad carrier, community, or other stakeholder identifies a potential strategy to address a trespassing or suicide risk in their community, they may need to explore options to cover the costs associated with implementing that countermeasure. In some cases, the railroad carrier or community may bear the cost for a certain countermeasure as a part of their public safety budget. In other cases, however, it can be helpful to identify external funding sources to help or fully cover the cost of an effort.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) provides a wide variety of mechanisms for railroad carriers, state DOTs, and other potential stakeholders to apply for funding to help or fully cover the cost of a rail safety effort. The specific opportunities and requirements for applicants change each year. Carefully reviewing the specific conditions for each grant opportunity will help to ensure that applicants meet the submission requirements. FRA provides resources about how to apply for different grants through webinars that are available here (in the Grants and Loans dropdown): https://dotcms.fra.dot.gov/webinars.
Information about grant funding opportunities can be found on FRA’s website here: https://railroads.dot.gov/grants. The website provides information about grant programs that are actively accepting applications, as well as programs that are not currently accepting applications but may again in the future. The Grants.gov website allows applicants to search for keywords in open grant opportunities that may provide funding for trespassing and suicide related implementations.
Other federal, state, and private grant opportunities can also contribute to funding efforts to prevent trespassing and suicide or mitigate their impacts. Measures that specifically focus on preventing suicide may be eligible for funding opportunities from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) or the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Additional search terms: cost, fund, funding, grant
Last Reviewed: July 1, 2024
- Include safety data in grant applications to support the need and cost of grant proposals to help reviewers to understand why the proposed action is important.
- Include a benefit-cost analysis in grant applications to support the need and cost of the proposed implementation. Tools are available to help estimate the true cost of an incident to help with benefit-cost estimates (e.g., NCDOT Cost Estimation Tool) [1].
- External funding can help to cover costs for rail carriers or communities with limited resources, or when a specific implementation is otherwise cost prohibitive.
- Grant funding may provide a path to implementing multiple countermeasures to address trespassing and suicide at the same time.
- Awarding successful grant applications and delivery of funding can take significant time, making it challenging to use grant funding for near-term measures.
- Some federal grants require cost matching and are not able to fully cover the cost of a proposed implementation.
- Federal grant applications often follow a very strict timeline and protocol, and therefore can be challenging to complete without adequate planning.
[1] Bert, S., Keller, C., Parsons, O., Randall, M., Poslusny, J., Lahare, A., Slunke, M., Searcy, S., and Findley, D. (2020). The Comprehensive Cost of Rail Incidents in North Carolina. Technical Report No. FHWA/NA/2020-44. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Transportation, Research and Development Unit.
Abstract: This research provides a comprehensive appraisal and cost tool for the broad spectrum of events occurring on North Carolina’s rail network. It evaluates costs associated with property damage, casualty, and delay, rerouting, and supply chain events. It also analyzes upstream effects, emissions costs, railroad operating costs, and emergency responder costs. FRA safety database records are used to inventory rail incidents that have occurred in North Carolina, while a collection of journal articles, reports, and other data sources such as Amtrak delay records, American Association of Railroads repair and maintenance costs schedules, and public safety answering point data are used for the analysis. In 2019, there were 187 rail incidents in North Carolina, imposing a total estimated cost of approximately $258.3 million. Of the costs incurred, casualties comprised the largest cost component valued at a cost of $252,816,000. Property damage costs were approximately $3,651,000; costs associated with delay, rerouting, and supply chain disruptions were approximately $1,572,000; emissions costs were $131,000; operating costs were $73,000; and first and emergency responder costs were an estimated $60,000. From 2010-2019, rail incident costs in North Carolina totaled an estimated $2.4 billion. Policymakers often underestimate the costs of rail incidents and are thus less inclined to allocate scarce resources to rail safety countermeasures. Thus, accompanying this research, the NCDOT Rail Division will be acquiring a cost tool that can be used to estimate the costs associated with the broad spectrum of events that occur on North Carolina’s rail network. The tool can be used to tabulate costs resulting from an individual event or to aggregate costs over a specified time period. Additionally, the tool can be updated as needed with more recent data, making it a living tool that can be useful for years to come.
Additional Resources
FRA Grant Opportunities – Website
Description: The website is where FRA posts grant opportunities.
Description: An FRA website with links to webinars including webinars which provide information about applying to FRA grants (use the Grants and Loans dropdown).
Description: A Federal website which provides information about Federal grant opportunities and includes a search functionality to search grants by keyword.
Description: A customizable tool developed by North Carolina DOT to estimate the true cost of a railroad incident.
FRA grant opportunities may apply to any of the measures that are included in the TSP Toolkit and depend on the specifics of the grant opportunity requirements.