Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway; West Palm Beach, FL

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 117</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. USCG-2023-0601]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway; West Palm Beach, FL</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Coast Guard, DHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Coast Guard proposes to modify the operating schedule that governs the Flagler Memorial (SR A1A) Bridge, mile 1021.8, the Royal Park (SR 704) Bridge, mile 1022.6, and the Southern Boulevard (SR 700/80) Bridge, mile 1024.7, across Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AICW), at West Palm Beach, FL. Palm Beach County and the communities surrounding the bridges have requested the Coast Guard consider placing additional weekday restrictions during peak traffic hours to assist with alleviating vehicle congestion. This proposed modification will allow the drawbridges to operate in concert and determine whether a permanent change to the schedules is needed. We invite your comments on this proposed rulemaking. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and related material must reach the Coast Guard on or before June 20, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by docket number USCG-2023-0601 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. This notice of proposed rulemaking with its plain-language, 100-word-or-less proposed rule summary will be available in this same docket. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> If you have questions on this proposed rule, call or email Ms. Jennifer Zercher, Bridge Management Specialist, Seventh Coast Guard District; telephone (571) 607-5951, email <E T="03">Jennifer.N.Zercher@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">OMB Office of Management and Budget</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPRM Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Advance, Supplemental)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">§ Section </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">U.S.C. United States Code</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FL Florida</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">TD Temporary Deviation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">AICW Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background, Purpose and Legal Basis</HD> The Flagler Memorial (SR A1A) Bridge, across the AICW, mile 1021.8, at West Palm Beach, FL is a double-leaf bascule bridge with a 24-foot vertical clearance at mean high water in the closed position. The normal operating schedule is set forth in 33 CFR 117.261(u). The Royal Park (SR 704) Bridge, across the AICW, mile 1022.6, at West Palm Beach, FL is a double-leaf bascule bridge with a 21-foot vertical clearance at mean high water in the closed position. The normal operating schedule is set forth in 33 CFR 117.261(v). The Southern Boulevard (SR 700/80) Bridge, across the AICW, mile 1024.7, at West Palm Beach, FL is a double-leaf bascule bridge with a 25-foot vertical clearance at mean high water in the closed position. The normal operating schedule is set forth in 33 CFR 117.261(w). On July 31, 2023, the Coast Guard published a temporary deviation entitled “Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, West Palm Beach, FL” in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (88 FR 49287). That temporary deviation, effective from 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 2023, through 11:59 p.m. on January 22, 2024, allows Flagler Memorial Bridge to operate a restricted opening schedule during peak traffic hours in the morning and evening. The comment period ended September 29, 2023, with 529 comments received. Most of the comments received during the temporary deviation request for comments for the Flagler Memorial Bridge were in favor of the temporary deviation. A total of 380 comments supported the deviation and included generic comments, such as “I support” or “I support this initiative.” The second highest group included 64 comments that were either outside the scope of temporary deviation or did not provide an opinion. Instead, comments were given on the adjacent drawbridges and school zones in the area. These comments were not considered actionable as they were not associated to the temporary deviation. Next, 63 commentors proposed alternate operating schedules. Those proposed alternate schedules included not opening during rush hour, or only open once an hour and at various morning and afternoon rush hour times. The designated times included in the rule proposal to allow the drawbridge to open on the hour during rush hour was previously determined by local authorities. The Coast Guard feels that a modification to those time periods is not necessary because the blocks of time presented have been determined to be the best use of hourly openings. To allow the drawbridge to remain closed to navigation during the designated times or to only open once an hour would result in an unreasonable obstruction to navigation on this waterway. The AICW is a Federal Project Waterway extending over 1500 miles from Boston to Florida Bay. It is the main waterway artery for all recreational and commercial traffic that are unable to safely transit offshore. The Coast Guard has the responsibility to ensure reasonable access to this waterway is maintained. Allowing the Flagler Memorial Bridge to remain closed to navigation of would be contrary to our responsibility. Finally, 10 comments were received which were against the proposed change. The main concern is that the bridge openings will be longer in duration during the hourly openings. An effect of limiting drawbridge openings is the possibility of longer openings to allow all vessels to safely pass. This may or may not occur. However, vehicles have alternate routes across the waterway that they may use if the bridge is open to navigation. The only alternate route available to vessels is open ocean, which may not be safe or reasonable to navigation. Another concern is that more vessels will be waiting for an opening which may cause conditions that are hazardous to navigation. Mariners must constantly maneuver and move to maintain control of their vessels, whereas vehicles are stationary while waiting for drawbridges. There are areas on either side of the bridge for mariners to maintain control of their vessels during the bridge openings. The Coast Guard understands this concern and we feel this is the reason for not allowing the bridge to remain closed to navigation but allow for hourly openings at the designated times and then twice an hour all other times There were also 12 comments that were duplicate and not considered actionable. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion of Proposed Rule</HD> Under this proposed rule, the Flagler Memorial (SR A1A), the Royal Park (SR 704), and the Southern Boulevard (SR 700/80) Bridges will open hourly during pre-designated times. Vehicle traffic across these bridges is exceeding the roadway capacity during certain times of the day. The Coast Guard is proposing to limit drawbridge openings during high vehicle traffic times to assist with vehicle congestion while requesting state and local agencies consider alternate mitigation measures to improve traffic flow and roadway congestion. The drawbridges will open twice an hour at all other times or as outlined in each drawbridge operating regulation. Vessels that can pass beneath the bridge without an opening may do so at any time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Regulatory Analyses</HD> We developed this proposed rule after considering numerous statutes and Executive Orders related to rulemaking. Below we summarize our analyses based on these statutes and Executive Orders. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess the costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits. This proposed rule has not been designated a “significant regulatory action,” under section 3(f) of Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094 (Modernizing Regulatory Review). Accordingly, the NPRM has not been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This regulatory action determination is based on the ability that vessels can still transit the bridge during the designated times and vessels able to pass without an opening may do so at any time. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Impact on Small Entities</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 (RFA), 5 U.S.C. 601-612, as amended, requires Federal agencies to consider the potential impact of regulations on small entities during rulemaking. The term “small entities” comprises small businesses, not-for-profit organizations that are independently owned and operated and are not dominant in their fields, and governmental jurisdictions with populations of less than 50,000. The Coast Guard certifies under 5 U.S.C. 605(b) that this proposed rule would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. While some owners or operators of vessels intending to transit the bridge may be small entities, for the reasons stated in section IV.A above this proposed rule would not have a significant economic impact on any vessel owner or operator. If you think that your business, organization, or governmental jurisdiction qualifies as a small entity and that this rule would have a significant economic imp ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━