Everyday more than 8,000 people ride the Trinity Railway Express (TRE) between Fort Worth and Dallas.
And every day, thousands of cars cross the same tracks those trains run on.
In far east Fort Worth, nearly to the Tarrant-Dallas county line, that includes two crossings that are starting to see more traffic and will soon see new safety improvements.
If you ever find yourself on Calloway Cemetery Road, you'll find when it crosses the TRE tracks that it's not the busiest of railroad crossings, but it may be the most confusing.
The road crosses the tracks at an odd angle. There are five safety gates that lower, one for each direction on Calloway Cemetery, one at the cement plant, one at a truck yard and a fifth to a property now gated closed.
The road runs from Farm-to-Market Road 157 to Euless Main Street. Despite those five gates, there is still plenty of room for drivers to get around the safety arms and cross the tracks even when a train is coming.
On Oct. 19, 2013, that's exactly what Mohammed Al-Tayyeb did, according to Fort Worth police at the time. His sedan was hit by a TRE train and Al-Tayyeb was killed.
More than two years later, not much has changed at the crossing. The manager of the trucking yard said the crossing is still unsafe.
He also says the signals regularly glitch, with false warnings and sometimes no chimes.
It's an issue likely to be addressed as the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T) Board approved funding for new safety enhancements there and at Tarran Main Street just to the east.
There's no specific incident or reason why the two crossings are getting the work now, as The T says it regularly works to upgrade safety at its crossings.
"We have a consistent program across the TRE corridor to improve at-grade crossings to improve safety element there," said Nancy Amos, senior vice president of The T.
Such safety elements were installed just to the west in Haltom City along Carson Street in 2014, following two fatal crashes in 2013 involving trains and vehicles that had bypassed the gates.
At the time The T said it would look to see if safety improvements would be warranted as it was unusual to have so many incidents that close together at one location.
Those heading south on Carson Street toward the tracks have a concrete divider running up to the tracks preventing anyone from crossing over into the other lane to avoid the lowering crossing gate.
Northbound traffic has several large pylons mounted into the roadway to prevent drivers from doing the same from that direction, something NBC 5 captured on camera in Nov. 2013 as a truck and trailer accelerated through the crossing while the gates were starting to lower.
"We've seen no accidents there since those improvements, since that investment was made," Amos said.
The goal is to do the same here at Calloway Cemetery Road, especially with the Viridian development in Arlington a stone's throw away.
"This is one that's going to have more development there and thus more traffic and we need to make it safer," Amos said.
And a safer crossing means a safer ride for those in trucks or on the train.
Funding for the two crossings is a private-public partnership.
In addition to The T's funding, Viridian's developer is chipping in which will help complete the project sooner.
