Rail Transit Roadway Worker Protection

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Transit Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 671 </CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FTA-2023-0024] </DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2132-AB41 </RIN> <SUBJECT>Rail Transit Roadway Worker Protection </SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY: </HD> Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION: </HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY: </HD> The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is proposing minimum safety standards for rail transit roadway worker protection (RWP) to ensure the safe operation of public transportation systems and to prevent accidents, incidents, fatalities, and injuries to transit workers who may access the roadway in the performance of work. This NPRM would apply to rail transit agencies (RTAs) covered by the State Safety Oversight (SSO) program, SSO agencies (SSOAs), and rail transit workers who access the roadway to perform work. It would set minimum standards for RWP program elements, including an RWP manual and track access guide; requirements for on-track safety and supervision, job safety briefings, good faith safety challenges, and reporting unsafe acts and conditions and near-misses; development and implementation of risk-based redundant protections for workers; and establishment of RWP training and qualification and RWP compliance monitoring activities. RTAs would be expected to comply with these Federal standards as a baseline and use their existing Safety Management System (SMS) processes to determine any additional mitigations appropriate to address the level of RWP risk identified. SSOAs would oversee and enforce implementation of the RWP program requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments should be filed by May 24, 2024. FTA will consider comments received after that date to the extent practicable. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES: </HD> You may send comments, identified by docket number FTA-2023-0024 by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for sending comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Background documents and comments received may also be viewed at the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For program matters, contact Ms. Margaretta “Mia” Veltri, Office of Transit Safety and Oversight, FTA, telephone at (202) 366-5094 or <E T="03">margaretta.veltri@dot.gov.</E> For legal matters, contact Ms. Emily Jessup, Attorney Advisor, FTA, telephone at 202-366-8907 or <E T="03">emily.jessup@dot.gov.</E> Office hours are from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: </HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Purpose and Summary of Regulatory Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Statutory Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background Informing FTA's Proposals</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Rail Transit Industry Safety Performance</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Recommendations From the National Transportation Safety Board</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Safety Risk Analysis and Report on Rail Transit Roadway Worker Protection</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Transit Worker Safety Request for Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Summary of Major Provisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Summary of Economic Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose and Summary of Regulatory Action</HD> The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has adopted the principles and methods of Safety Management System (SMS) as the basis for enhancing the safety of public transportation in the United States. As part of its internal SMS, FTA established a Safety Risk Management (SRM) program to proactively address safety concerns impacting the transit industry and to systematically apply FTA's statutory oversight authority to improve the safety of the nation's transit infrastructure through the Public Transportation Safety Program. The process follows a five-step approach: (1) identify safety concerns; (2) assess safety risk; (3) develop mitigation; (4) implement mitigation; and (5) monitor safety performance. As a result of the first two steps, FTA may develop and advance appropriate mitigations to address a safety hazard, such as proposed safety regulations, general or special directives, safety advisories, or technical assistance and training activities. In 2019, FTA began piloting the SRM process to focus on high-priority safety risks and identified the RWP safety concern as the second topic for analysis. Through the SRM process, FTA conducted a review of the existing approaches to RWP used by the rail transit industry. This review shows that on a national level, these approaches do not adequately protect transit workers from rail transit vehicles and other roadway hazards. As a result, FTA has determined that a Federal baseline RWP program is an appropriate mitigation and is proposing this regulation to reduce fatalities and serious injury events involving rail transit workers that occupy the rail roadway during hours of operation. This NPRM would require RTAs covered by the SSO program under 49 CFR part 674 (Part 674) to implement a minimum, baseline RWP program to provide a standardized and consistent approach to protecting roadway workers industry-wide, overseen and enforced by SSOAs. Using the Federal standards as a baseline, FTA would expect RTAs to use their existing documented safety risk management processes to assess the associated safety risk and, based on the results of the safety risk assessment, identify the specific safety risk mitigations or strategies necessary to address the safety risk. This NPRM would prohibit the use of individual rail transit vehicle detection as a sole form of protection for workers on the roadway. It would set requirements for RTAs to conduct a safety risk assessment to identify and establish redundant protections for each category of work roadway workers perform on the roadway or track. Redundant protections may include procedures, such as foul time and advance warning systems, and also physical protections to stop trains in advance of workers, such as derailers and shunts. The safety risk assessment and redundant protections would be reviewed and approved by the SSOA, along with other elements of the RTA's RWP program. The safety risk assessment would be consistent with the RTA's Agency Safety Plan and the SSOA's Program Standard. RTAs may supplement the safety risk assessment with engineering assessments, inputs from the Safety Assurance process established under 49 CFR 673.27, the results of safety event investigations, and other safety risk management strategies and approaches. To ensure effective implementation and oversight of the RWP program and redundant protections, this NPRM also would specify RWP training and compliance monitoring activities, supplemented by near-miss reporting and SSOA oversight and auditing. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Statutory Authority</HD> Congress directed FTA to establish a Public Transportation Safety Program in the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (Pub. L. 112-141) (MAP-21), which was reauthorized by the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (Pub. L. 114-94). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, enacted as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Pub. L. 117-58), continues FTA's authority to regulate public transportation systems that receive Federal financial assistance under Chapter 53. Title 49 U.S.C. 5329(f)(7) authorizes FTA to issue rules to carry out the public transportation safety program. Title 49 U.S.C. 5329(b)(2) directs FTA to develop and implement a National Public Transportation Safety Plan (NSP) that includes minimum safety standards to ensure the safe operation of public transportation systems. In 2017, FTA published its first iteration of the National Safety Plan which was intended to be FTA's primary tool for communicating with the transit industry about its safety performance (82 FR 5628). Subsequently, on May 31, 2023, FTA published a second iteration of the NSP (88 FR 34917). While the NSP currently contains only voluntary standards, as FTA's safety program has matured, it is now appropriate for FTA to propose required minimum standards for RWP. Pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553), FTA is proposing these minimum standards for public notice and comment through the rulemaking process. <HD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 162k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━