SOUTH ROYALTON — The Vermont Transportation Board is holding a site visit and evidentiary hearing in South Royalton on Thursday to determine the fate of two railroad crossings in the town, one of which was the site of a fatal vehicle-train crash in November of last year.

Thursday’s hearing comes after the town filed two petitions, one in July and one in September, to install safety-enhancing lights and bars at one railroad crossing located at the junction of Stearn Road, Hewitt Hill Lane and Hillside Lane, and to permanently close another crossing a bit further south where Stearn Road merges into South Windsor Street. Both crossings are south of the village of South Royalton, near Hurricane Flats Farm.

The hearing is being held at the Chase Community Center on the Vermont Law and Graduate School’s campus at 1 p.m. on Thursday.

The transportation board also will visit the sites of the two railroad crossings ahead of the hearing at around 10:30 a.m.

The crossing requested by the town to receive safety upgrades is the same one where Vermont Law School student Thomas Fennell was killed when his SUV was struck by an Amtrak passenger train called the “Vermonter” last November, which the petition notes and cites as an incident the “people of (Royalton)” hope safety enhancements will ensure unlikely to happen again.

The crossing had yield and railroad crossing signs, but no warning lights or bars, which the town has requested as part of the petition. Royalton Town Administrator Victoria Paquin said the crossing the town hopes the transportation board will agree to close has posed challenges to the town’s road crews in the past because of its limited visibility and because it’s difficult to traverse with snowplows.

Paquin said the highway department had already blocked off the crossing with jersey barriers before last winter because of those challenges, so local commuters are already used to it being closed.

The petition also noted that the railroad crossing further north is more suitable for traffic.

Vermont Transportation Board Executive Secretary John Zicconi said the board is “under no obligation” to decide what course of action to take following the hearing, which will feature comments from representatives with the town, the railroad and Vermont Agency of Transportation and that they will issue a written order at “some future point in time.”

Paquin, however, is optimistic that the board will approve the crossing’s closing because VTrans has already lent its support via a response to the town’s petition. She also said the company that owns the tracks, Genesee & Wyoming, which owns or leases 228 miles of rail line in Vermont and 34 miles in New Hampshire through its subsidiary New England Central Railroad, are in agreement with both petitions. In fact, Paquin said NECR had already begun looking into making safety changes to the same crossing the town petitioned for improvements.

Charlie Hunter, Genesee & Wyoming’s assistant vice president of government affairs, said his company has been in the discussion stages for more than a year with Amtrak and VTrans on a project upgrading public crossings of the “Vermonter.” Hunter noted that NECR and Amtrak are the only two railroad companies that operate through Royalton.

There are 82 public crossings in Vermont alone that the Vermonter passes through on its trip, Hunter said. In the Upper Valley, in addition to Royalton, it also passes through Randolph, Bethel, Sharon and Hartford along its journey.

NECR’s response to the town’s petition noted that Saratoga Railroad Engineering was awarded the contract to build the safety equipment and is expected to complete the project by June of next year pending the board’s approval.

Paquin said it wasn’t the first time in the town’s history that it’s asked for this type of change to an at-grade crossing, mentioning that one on Lyon Road was enhanced to include lights and bars on the town’s behalf.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s more (railroad crossings) in the future that we look at and think: ‘We need to do something about this particular one,’ ” Paquin said.

Anyone wishing to attend the site visit should arrive at the Chase Community Center at Vermont Law and Graduate School by 10:30 a.m. and can contact John Zicconi, Vermont Transportation Board executive secretary, at 802-343-7280 with questions.

Ray Couture can be reached at 1994rbc@gmail.com.