The long, winding path to fix some of the nation’s most dangerous railroad crossings often becomes mired in bureaucracy, leaving thousands of crossings nationwide unprotected and potentially dangerous for years, a Star investigation has found. As a result, people across the country are dying at crossings that have been tagged for safety upgrades, the investigation showed. Had those fixes been made, and active warning devices installed, many of those deaths likely could have been prevented — like Layton Rogers, a 16-year-old Ohio teen who was killed when his car was hit by a train at a crossing that had no lights or gates, just crossbucks and a yield sign. Another teen had died in a crash there in 1993. Despite studies that show flashing lights and gates can significantly decrease the number of collisions, many crossings nationwide still don’t have them. About half the 130,000 railroad crossings in the country are still passive, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. He...