Kudos to the Oregon Department of Transportation, which last week appeared to back away from its plans to close a pair of railroad crossings near downtown Corvallis.

ODOT announced last month that it planned to barricade two railroad crossings, one on Seventh Street and one on 11th Street. At the time, the agency said the two crossings were unsafe.

But from the start, the calls for closures were not persuasive: The state pointed to two collisions over the past 10 years at 11th Street, where large bushes blocked visibility for motorists looking east. In that case, the state recommended traffic use a crossing at 15th Street, which statistically seemed to be more dangerous, with two accidents in the past seven years.

At Seventh Street, where a metal shed blocks traffic from the sight of westbound trains, ODOT had reported eight collisions over the last 40 years.

The proposed closings would have dealt a gut punch to businesses in the area. The owner of Denson Feed and Seed, for example, was worried - with justification - that losing access to Western Boulevard would have been a death knell for the store.

State law gives ODOT the power to close street-level railroad crossings without a public process when they're deemed unsafe. However, in this case, ODOT officials apparently listened to the comments of the business owners and city residents who asked the Corvallis City Council to intervene. (City officials performed well throughout this incident.)

Last week, word came from city officials that tall shrubs have been trimmed near the 11th Street crossing, increasing the visibility there, and so that crossing will stay open. As for the Seventh Street crossing; the owner of the warehouse that's blocking visibility says he's willing to remove about 800 square feet of the building, as long as the city picks up the tab. The owner is now in the process of getting bids for that project. If the corner of the shed is removed by mid-October, the closure order for the Seventh Street crossing will be rescinded.

We like to complain that ODOT - or other government bureaucracies, for that matter - never listens to its constituents. But here's a case where ODOT apparently was willing to listen to other voices, and so give it credit for that.

Of course, if ODOT had done that listening first, before it fired off those closure orders, there's a good chance this matter might not have raised anybody's hackles in the first place. But raising hackles also raised some legitimate safety issues. Instead of sticking inflexibly by its initial plan, ODOT has demonstrated commendable leadership.