This paper describes an ultra-wideband (UWB) radar system designed to detect motor vehicles such as cars and trucks when they are present in a railway crossing. Once fully developed, the detection performance of the system is to be compared against a video detection system in a test at a crossing in Maywood, Illinois. If the test is successful this system may be further developed and installed at a four-quadrant gate crossing to sense vehicles trapped in the crossing island (i.e. the area

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... d by the gate arms). This paper describes the problem at hand and gives details of the radar system development to date. With the current prototype, a pulse width of 3 ns has been achieved, which yields adequate range resolution for this application.