Uniform Procedures for State Highway Safety Grant Programs

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>23 CFR Part 490</CFR> <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>23 CFR Part 1300</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM45</RIN> <SUBJECT>Uniform Procedures for State Highway Safety Grant Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule amends the uniform procedures implementing the State Highway Safety Grant Program to waive, for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, the requirement that targets for the common performance measures be identical to targets in the State Highway Safety Improvement Program. This final rule makes a corresponding change to a similar requirement in the FHWA's performance management regulation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective May 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This document may be viewed online through the Federal eRulemaking portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> using the docket number listed above. Electronic retrieval help and guidelines are available on the website. It is available 24 hours each day, 365 days each year. An electronic copy of this document may also be downloaded by accessing the Office of the Federal Register's website at: <E T="03">www.federalregister.gov</E> and the U.S. Government Publishing Office's website at: <E T="03">www.GovInfo.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For NHTSA:</E> Program issues: Barbara Sauers, Associate Administrator, Regional Operations and Program Delivery, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Telephone number: (202) 366-0144; Email: <E T="03">barbara.sauers@dot.gov.</E> Legal issues: Megan Brown, Attorney-Advisor, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590; Telephone number: (202) 366-1834; Email: <E T="03">megan.brown@dot.gov.</E> <E T="03">For FHWA:</E> Kelly Morton, Office of Safety, (202) 366-8090 or via email at <E T="03">kelly.morton@dot.gov</E> or Dawn Horan, Office of the Chief Counsel, (202) 366-9615 or via email at <E T="03">dawn.horan@dot.gov.</E> Office hours are from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., E.T., 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-1">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">II. Waiver of Identical Targets for Common Performance Measures</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">III. Waiver of Notice and Comment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IV. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The NHTSA and the FHWA share three common performance measures in their highway safety programs—total fatalities, rate of fatalities, and total serious injuries—and have shared these common performance measure for many years. Both NHTSA and FHWA regulations require States to submit identical targets for the three common performance measures—in NHTSA's triennial Highway Safety Plan (HSP) and in FHWA's Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) annual report. See 23 CFR 1300.11(b)(3)(ii)(C) and 490.209(a)(1), respectively. On November 15, 2021, the President signed into law the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” (known also as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, or BIL), Public Law 117-58. The BIL provided additional grant funds to States and changed several requirements to support States in their efforts to strengthen their highway safety programs. Among other things, the BIL required that all performance targets submitted to NHTSA in the triennial HSP demonstrate constant or improved performance. 23 U.S.C. 402(d)(4)(A)(ii). The NHTSA published a final rule implementing the Highway Safety Grant Program under the BIL on February 6, 2023, at 88 FR 7780. The rule provides direction to States on procedures for meeting the statutory requirements governing their highway safety grant programs and applications. In addition to changing from performance targets submitted to NHTSA in an annual HSP to a triennial HSP, the rule requires States to submit constant or improved targets for the common performance measures and that these targets be identical to the targets that are reported by the State department of transportation (State DOT) in the HSIP annual report. See 23 CFR 1300.11(b)(3)(ii)(B). On June 5, 2023, NHTSA and FHWA amended the uniform procedures implementing the State Highway Safety Grant Program to waive, for FY 2024, the requirement that targets for the common performance measures be identical to targets in the State Highway Safety Improvement Program. 88 FR 36472. The amendment was in response to questions from stakeholders about the interplay between NHTSA's and FHWA's current regulations. On January 25, 2024, FHWA released a notice of proposed rulemaking concerning its performance measures that addresses and seeks comment on this issue. 89 FR 4857. Stakeholders continue to raise questions about the interplay between NHTSA's and FHWA's current regulations; however, the FHWA has not yet completed a new regulation implementing any changes to its performance measures since the passage of BIL. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Waiver of Identical Targets for Common Performance Measures</HD> In this rulemaking, FHWA amends 23 CFR 490.209(a)(1) to waive, for FY 2025, the requirement that the State DOT targets shall be identical to the targets established by the State Highway Safety Office (HSO) for common performance measures reported in the State's HSP. The NHTSA amends 23 CFR 1300.12 to revise paragraph (b)(1)(ii) to provide that States may update the triennial HSP to amend common performance measures only if necessary, in order to submit identical performance targets to FHWA in the HSIP annual report. As a result of FHWA's waiver in this document, this amendment will mean that States may not amend the common performance targets submitted in the FY 24 triennial HSP in the FY 25 Annual Grant Application. With these changes, State HSOs will continue to use the non-identical targets submitted in the FY 24 triennial HSP and State DOTs have the flexibility to submit non-identical targets for the common performance measures for FY 2025 in the 2024 HSIP annual reports. While NHTSA and FHWA are affording States flexibility to continue to use non-identical targets for FY 2025 highway safety programs, HSOs and State DOTs are nevertheless encouraged to continue to collaborate as they work together to implement a Safe System Approach and reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roadways. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Waiver of Notice and Comment</HD> The NHTSA and FHWA find good cause to issue, without notice and comment, and to make effective immediately, this time-limited waiver of the requirement for identical targets, in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B) and 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(1). The Administrative Procedure Act provides that when an agency, for good cause, finds that notice and public comment are impractical, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest, the agency may issue a final rule without providing notice and an opportunity for public comment (5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B)). For the same reason, the rule can become effective immediately. See 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(1). The safety programs of NHTSA and FHWA are governed by different statutory provisions, and FHWA has not completed its notice and comment rulemaking on the National Performance Management Measures since the passage of BIL. The NHTSA and FHWA recognize the importance of allowing time for States to provide comments on the FHWA program, but also recognize that HSOs must meet the upcoming statutory August 1 deadline to submit their Annual Grant Applications, which includes amendments to their triennial HSPs for the NHTSA program and State DOTs must meet the August 31 deadline to submit their safety performance targets in their HSIP annual reports. States' efforts to develop their FY 2025 Annual Grant Applications are underway at this time, and it is critical that States be provided certainty about application criteria. With these considerations in mind, NHTSA finds it in the public interest to amend the regulation to clarify that, States may only amend common performance targets only if necessary to submit identical targets to FHWA in the HSIP, and to make this amendment effective immediately. Likewise, FHWA finds it in the public interest to waive the regulatory requirement in 23 CFR 490.209(a)(1) that the State DOT targets shall be identical to the targets established by the State HSO for the common performance measures, for fiscal year 2025, and to make this waiver effective immediately. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review), E.O. 13563, and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures</HD> The NHTSA and FHWA have considered the impact of this rulemaking action under E.O. 12866 (as amended by E.O. 14094), E.O. 13563, and the DOT's regulatory policies and procedures. This rulemaking document was not reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under E.O. 12866. This action is not expected to impose any costs because it makes limited revisions to the uniform procedures implementing State highway safety grant programs. This rulemaking has been determined to be not “significant” under the DOT's regulatory policies and procedures and the policies of OMB. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) of 1980 (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) requires agencies to evaluate t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━