Grants for Regional Australia Level Crossing Safety Program

The Australian Federal Government has opened applications for a grant pertaining to its Regional Australia Level Crossing Safety Program (RALCSP), with a total of $4.6 million earmarked for the program. Work emanating from this project will “… improve safety at rail level crossings across regional Australia using research, data and practical trials”.

This funding for the Level Crossing Safety Research and Innovation Project is on top of $160 million already allocated for work on level crossing removal in regional Australia in the years 2023—24 and 2026—27.

“Regional and rural communities have been campaigning for safety upgrades at level crossing and we have listened,” said Catherine King, Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister.

“These grants deliver on our October 2022–23 Budget commitment to establish the RALCSP, targeting safety at these crossings nationwide. I strongly encourage all stakeholders, including those from the industry, research bodies, and universities, to apply for the Research and Innovation Project grants,” continued Ms King.

The objectives for the grant are to:

• support the research and investigation of new technologies and approaches to improve level crossing safety, particularly lower-cost technologies and those that are suited to regional areas;
• support the risk assessment, trial and/or introduction into use of innovative and/or lower cost level crossing safety improvements and improvements to train visibility at level crossings. This may include activities to evaluate the reliability of a technology, consider its effectiveness at addressing risks and consider any unintended consequences and how to mitigate against them; and
• provide a sound evidence base to support future decision-making around level crossings, such as understanding human behaviour around level crossings and drivers of behavioural change in order to better target safety treatments and other interventions.

More information, and applications

UPDATE: Applications closed on 23 March 2023.

iMOVE Australia is involved in a project related to level crossing removal in Victoria, Construction industry supply chain data sharing framework.