Section 57-43-15 - Mississippi Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing Safety Account(1) There is established within the Railroad Revitalization Fund a new account to be entitled the Mississippi Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing Safety Account. The account shall be administered by the Mississippi Department of Transportation and shall consist of: (a) Such monies as are transferred to it on July 1, 2001, from the Mississippi Grade Crossing Closure Account;(b) Thirty-five percent (35%) of collections from the locomotive fuel tax imposed under Section 27-59-307 for the previous year; and(c) Monies transferred to it from the Railroad Revitalization Fund, pursuant to the provisions of Section 2 of Chapter 497, Laws of 2009. Unexpended amounts remaining in the account at the end of a fiscal year shall not lapse into the State General Fund; and any interest earned on amounts in the account shall be deposited to the credit of the account.
(2) The Mississippi Transportation Commission, after consulting with the railroads operating in Mississippi, shall promulgate rules to ensure equitable allocation of the funds described in subsection (1) of this section to projects throughout the state, and shall consider the proportionate number of main line track miles of each railroad and the number of public roadway/railroad grade crossings on each railroad's main line. Expenditure of monies from the Mississippi Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing Safety Account shall be limited to the following purposes: (a) Financial aid for closure of public roadway/railroad grade crossings;(b) Realignment of construction costs of roadways being rerouted to facilitate a closure of a public roadway/railroad grade crossing;(c) Monies to match federal or other funds for a grade separation eliminating an at-grade crossing of a public roadway and railroad;(d) Installation, maintenance or upgrade of highway-railroad grade crossing signals, at the discretion of the Mississippi Transportation Commission, based upon the Federal Railroad Administration ranking of all Mississippi highway-railroad grade crossings. Not less than ten percent (10%) of the monies necessary to defray the costs of such installations must be federal funds;(e) Separation of grades of highway/railroad crossings;(f) Improvement of any grade crossing including the necessary roadway approaches thereto of any railroad across a public road highway;(g) Construction, reconstruction, repair or replacement of the grade crossing surface structure; and(h) Installation of an automatic advance warning signal alerting a motorist that a grade crossing is ahead.(3) The Mississippi Department of Transportation shall consider all requests from the state's diagnostic review of public roadway/railroad grade crossings and from individual railroads for expenditure of funds for the purposes described in subsection (2) of this section, and shall establish uniform criteria and guidelines relating to such crossings and the expenditure of funds. Laws, 2001, ch. 367, § 2; Laws, 2007, ch. 572, § 1; Laws, 2009, ch. 497, § 6, eff. 7/1/2009.