Villa Park hears sensor proposals for rail crossings as staff advances grade-separation engineering

Two technology vendors told the Village of Villa Park on Monday that they can deliver real‑time data and mobile alerts to shorten delays and improve emergency response at railroad crossings, while village staff reported progress on engineering for a long‑planned grade‑separation project.

Barry Carta, cofounder and CEO of Corey Railway Group, described a low‑cost sensor that records each train’s passage, speed, length and the percent of time crossings are blocked. “This sensor has the ability to collect date and time of any passage of any train going on the line,” Carta said, adding his firm will produce customizable data reports municipal staff can use for grant applications or planning.

Kurt Brandt, chief executive officer of Linked Things, told trustees his company’s multi‑sensor units (lidar, radar, magnetometer, camera, audio and vibration sensors) feed a cloud service that supports three apps: an audio‑first “in‑cab” app for emergency responders, a dispatch map for incident coordination, and a community app for residents. “One of the things that we’ve done studies like this in other communities…94% of the people say they go around the train,” Brandt said, describing risk and “congestion frustration” that the tools aim to reduce.

The proposals came as part of broader work on grade separations: Mike, the village’s Public Works Department director, reported the village completed a 2024 feasibility study and has obtained Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) funding on a 50/50 match basis for phase‑1 engineering. Staff recommended and the village selected CDM Smith to perform phase‑1 engineering services. Mike said the full process — environmental review, traffic and geotechnical studies, public outreach and railroad coordination — will likely take “4 to 7 years” before construction could start, with seven years seen as the more likely timeline.

Linked Things provided a ballpark price for a sensor package: about $25,000 for a crossing in the first year (installation and service) with roughly a 20% annual maintenance fee thereafter; the speaker estimated a village‑scale initial cost in the tens of thousands of dollars per crossing and annual follow‑up costs of roughly $5,000 per crossing after the first year. Brandt said about 80% of sensors in other installations sit on municipal right‑of‑way, with the remainder on village or private property, and that vendors can work with municipal permitting, power and communications options.

Trustees pressed vendors on technical limits and deployment scope. Trustee questions covered whether sensors can distinguish two trains on adjacent tracks (vendors said yes, with flagged patterns or by installing split sensors), how the system would indicate expected wait times to drivers and first responders (audio alerts and map visualizations), whether the community would get access (vendors said a community app rollout was imminent), and how corridor coverage would improve predictive lead time (vendors said cross‑jurisdiction deployments increase advance warning but that train speed and routing can change).

Mike said phase‑1 engineering will include new traffic counts, environmental assessments, utility coordination, preliminary site layouts for underpass/overpass alternatives, cost‑benefit analysis required for federal funding, and coordination with the railroad and ICC. He said the village requested roughly $600,000 in ICC grant funding for phase‑1 engineering and that the full phase‑1 scope is anticipated to fall in a $600,000–$800,000 range; final pricing and the CDM Smith scope were expected to return to the board at a future meeting.

A DuPage Rail Safety Council board member, Joe Amore, spoke during public comment and said the council arranged the vendor presentations and supports using current data to help future grade‑separation planning. No formal action or contract awards were taken during the Committee of the Whole meeting; trustees asked staff to return with more detailed cost estimates, grant‑strategy assistance and a CDM Smith presentation at an upcoming meeting.

For now, the village is considering short‑term sensor deployments that vendors said can be installed in hours or days and which could provide actionable data to support long‑term funding applications for grade separations that staff cautioned will take multiple years to design and secure funding for.