Garland staff outline Section 130 railroad‑crossing safety funding, identify two priority crossings

Paul Lettke of Garland Transportation told the Transportation, Infrastructure, and Mobility Committee that Section 130 is a federal program focused on railroad‑highway crossing safety administered through state departments of transportation. "Section 130 is a safety program for the, Federal Highway Administration at the federal government," Lettke said, explaining that the Federal Highway Administration provides the funds but the state (TxDOT) selects and administers projects.

Lettke said Texas receives about $20,000,000 a year for Section 130 work statewide and that Garland cannot apply directly to the federal government; the city must submit candidate projects to TxDOT for consideration. He cited a combination of safety metrics TxDOT uses to rank crossings (crash history, train volumes and speeds, roadway geometry and queuing), and said the city has 42 crossings in TxDOT's database. "There are there are over 10,000 crossings that they have in their text dot database just in Texas. We have 2 that are in the top 1,000," he said, adding one appears in the top 100 and another around the 300s.

Lettke warned that Section 130 typically covers safety‑related items (crossing panels, approaches, signals, gates) and not general maintenance. He also warned that federal funding brings administrative requirements, long paperwork timelines and the need to coordinate with railroads — sometimes with TxDOT paying the railroad directly. As next steps, staff said they will seek fuller TxDOT data (Lettke reported he submitted a FOIA request to obtain what he has so far) and will identify the two high‑ranked crossings so the city can monitor them for future opportunities.