Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Portage River, Port Clinton, OH

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 117</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. USCG-2023-0186]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Portage River, Port Clinton, OH</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security (DHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Coast Guard is altering operating regulations of the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4 and the Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge, mile 1.5, over the Portage River at Port Clinton, Ohio. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective April 8, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by docket number USCG-2023-0186 using Federal Decision-Making Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> See the “Public Participation and Request for Comments” portion of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section below for instructions on submitting comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions on this final rule, call or email Mr. Lee D. Soule, Bridge Management Specialist, Ninth Coast Guard District; telephone 216-902-6085, email <E T="03">Lee.D.Soule@uscg.mil.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Table of Abbreviations</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">CFR Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">DHS Department of Homeland Security</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FR Federal Register</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IGLD International Great Lakes Datum of 1985</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">LWD Low Water Datum based on IGLD85 MPH Miles Per Hour</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPRM Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Advance, Supplemental)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">OMB Office of Management and Budget</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">§ Section </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">U.S.C. United States Code</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background Information and Regulatory History</HD> On May 5, 2023, the Coast Guard published an NPRM, with a request for comments, entitled “Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Portage River, Port Clinton, OH” in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (88 FR 29007), to seek your comments on whether the Coast Guard should consider modifying the current operating schedule to the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4 and the Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge, mile 1.5, over the Portage River at Port Clinton, Ohio. 208 comments were received during the NPRM period. The relevant comments are addressed in Section IV of this Final Rule. The current regulation for the Portage River reads as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD2">§ 117.851 Portage River</HD> (a) Public vessels of the United States, State or local government vessels used for public safety, vessels in distress and vessels seeking shelter from rough weather shall be passed through the draws listed in this section as soon as possible. Except as provided in paragraph (c)(1)(ii) with respect to the Monroe Street bridge, commercial vessels shall be passed through the draws of this section as soon as possible. (b) The owners of the bridges listed in this section shall provide and keep in good legible condition two board gages painted white with black figures to indicate the vertical clearance under the closed draw at all stages of the tide. The gages shall be so placed on the bridge that they are plainly visible to operators of vessels approaching the bridge either up or downstream. (c) The draw of the Monroe Street bridge, mile 0.4 at Port Clinton, shall open as follows: (1) From May 1 through November 30— (i) Between the hours of 12 midnight and 6 a.m., the draw shall open on signal. (ii) Between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight, the draw shall open on signal. However, the draw need not open on signal during this time for recreational craft and commercial vessels licensed to carry fifteen or less passengers, or less than ten gross tons, unless in distress or seeking shelter from rough weather. For these vessels, the draw need open only from three minutes before to three minutes after the hour and half-hour. (2) From December 1 through April 30, the draw shall open on signal if at least 24 hours' notice is given. (d) The draw of the Norfolk Southern Bridge, Mile 1.5 at Port Clinton, is remotely operated, is required to operate a radio telephone, and shall open on signal. However, from December 1 through April 30, the draw shall open on signal if at least 24 hours' notice is given. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Legal Authority and Need for Rule</HD> The Coast Guard is issuing this rule under authority 33 U.S.C. 499. The Portage River is crossed by two movable bridges. The Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, is a double leaf bascule bridge that provides a horizontal clearance of 75-feet, a vertical clearance of 9-feet in the closed position, and an unlimited clearance in the open position based on Low Water Datum (LWD). The Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge, mile 1.5, is a single leaf bascule bridge with a horizontal clearance of 109-feet, a vertical clearance of 9-feet in the closed position, and an unlimited clearance in the open position based on LWD. Norfolk Southern Railroad's bridge over the Portage River is remotely operated by the Toledo Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge. Numerous informal complaints and concerns from local mariners concerning the operations of the Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge, mile 1.5 triggered a review of the operating regulations governing the bridges across Portage River. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Discussion of Comments, Changes, and the Final Rule</HD> During the rulemaking process we discovered that the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, sees an average of 15,000 vessels passing through the bridge annually. In addition, an average of 3,500 vehicles transit over the bridge daily. The current regulation allows the bridge to open on signal if a 24-hour advance notice of arrival is provided by vessels during the period from November 30th through April 30th. A review of the past three years of drawtender logs indicates the bridge opens more than three times a day in April for vessels. After analyzing this data and discussing vessel and vehicle traffic levels with Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and to better conform to exiting use patterns, the end date for the advance notice of arrival period for the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, and the Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge, mile 1.5, will be pushed back to March 31 and changed to a 12-hour advance notice to meet the current needs of navigation and to conform to current guidance. Of the comments received for the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, 116 concerns were raised that vessels should not have the right of way or preference to vehicular traffic. The Coast Guard is required by law to ensure that bridges across navigable waters of the United States do not unreasonably obstruct waterway traffic while providing for the reasonable needs of land traffic. The Coast Guard must also ensure actions are taken that allow the 15,000 vessels that pass through the bridge annually do so in a safe and orderly manner. To ensure vessel safety, any schedule causing vessels to wait for a bridge opening must also provide for safe waiting areas for the number of vessels passing through the bridge. Because of this, changes to a drawbridge regulation are bound by law to minimize exceptions or provisions which may restrict waterway traffic. As a result of our review of the bridge drawtender logs, the Coast Guard discovered, on average, less than four openings occurred between 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. each day. Accordingly, the Coast Guard intends to maintain hourly and half hour openings from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to ease the movement of vehicles. In advance of a special event, the City or State may in request to modify the drawbridge operations temporally to accommodate high vehicle or vessel flow associated with these events. Great Lakes ports commonly make these requests in the spring for modifications to be effective during special summer events. Of the comments received for the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, 27 expressed concerns that emergency vehicles would not be able to cross the bridge if it was open. 33 CFR 117.31 requires the drawtender to make all reasonable provisions for emergency response whether waterborne or vehicular. Informal comments from residents regarding emergency operations were responded to directly and personally by email or phone depending on how the comment was received. We also corresponded with ODOT and the Port Clinton Fire Department for their respective input on each informal inquiry. Of the comments received for the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, 8 comments were focused on a pedestrian crossing. Pedestrian crossing was established to allow pedestrians to cross from an adjacent parking lot to the boarding area for the Jet-Express Ferry. Commenters reported the crossing of pedestrians at the foot of the bridge causes vehicular traffic back-ups at the bridge and blocks emergency vehicles. The Coast Guard intends to provide these comments to ODOT for their evaluation of the crossing and the effect it has on highway transportation issues. Of the comments received for the Monroe Street Highway Bridge, mile 0.4, only one commenter thought that the existing clearance gauges should remain. The Coast Guard does not believe the bridge needs to maintain these gauges at the bridge to alert the mariners to changes to the bridge clearance due to fluctuations in water level. Clearance gauges are required on bridges where the waterway is subject to the ebb and flow of tides, or where water levels are altered artificially by humans through dams, locks, or other artificial works. The bridge pr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━