Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Hackensack River, Little Snake Hill, NJ

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Coast Guard</SUBAGY> <CFR>33 CFR Part 117</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. USCG-2024-0412]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1625-AA09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Hackensack River, Little Snake Hill, NJ</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 conditions of the Amtrak Portal Bridge across the Hackensack River, mile 5.0, at Little Snake Hill, New Jersey. This action is necessary to facilitate the construction of the new replacement Portal Bridge North, adjacent to the current Amtrak Portal Bridge. This proposed rulemaking would limit the extent of the opening of the Amtrak Portal Bridge in the horizontal position to prevent the swing span from striking the new Portal Bridge North during construction. 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 November 4, 2024. The Coast Guard anticipates that this proposed rule will be effective on or about February 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by docket number USCG-2024-0412 using the Federal Decision Making Portal at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> See the “Public Participation and Request for Comments” portion of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section below for instruction 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. Judy Leung-Yee, First Coast Guard District, Project Officer; telephone 212-514-4336, email <E T="03">Judy.K.Leung-Yee@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> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background, Purpose and Legal Basis</HD> The Amtrak Portal Bridge is a swing bridge across the Hackensack River, at mile 5.0, in Little Snake Hill, NJ. The bridge has a vertical clearance of 23 feet at mean high water in the closed position and 102 feet at mean high water in the open position. When closed, the Amtrak Portal Bridge allows trains to transit across the river. When marine traffic needs to transit down the waterway, the bridge swings open from a central pivot to create horizontal clearance for vessels. The waterway users include recreational and commercial vessels, and the existing drawbridge operating regulations are listed at 33 CFR 117.723(e). In partnership with New Jersey Transit, Amtrak plans to replace the Amtrak Portal Bridge (existing bridge), with a 52-foot-tall, fixed bridge, the Portal Bridge North (new bridge) that will allow marine traffic to pass without movement of the bridge. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Shoreside construction of the new bridge is already underway and New Jersey Transit estimates completion by February 2027. To support construction of the new bridge, New Jersey Transit submitted a request to the Coast Guard to change the drawbridge operating regulations of the existing bridge. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  More details on the construction plans can be found here: <E T="03">https://www.amtrak.com/portal-north-bridge.</E> </FTNT> The purpose of this proposed rule is to limit the opening of the existing Amtrak Portal Bridge to prevent striking the new Portal Bridge North while swinging open. This is necessary due to the proximity of the new Portal Bridge North to the existing Amtrak Portal Bridge. The Coast Guard is proposing this rulemaking under the authority in 33 U.S.C. 499. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion of Proposed Rule</HD> The Amtrak Portal Bridge would continue to operate under its regular operating schedule found in 33 CFR 117.723(e), but there would be a difference in the horizontal clearance. Presently, the Amtrak Portal Bridge provides 88 feet horizontal clearance in the east channel and 91 feet horizontal clearance in the west channel. This proposed rule would allow the bridge to only open to 55 feet horizontal clearance in the east channel and the west channel would be closed to all navigation. Construction on the new Portal Bridge North will prevent the existing Amtrak Portal Bridge from fully opening in the horizontal position in order to prevent the swing span from striking the new Portal Bridge North during construction. The construction will impact the Amtrak Portal Bridge for approximately 2 years, from February 1, 2025, to February 1, 2027, after which the existing bridge will be demolished. There is one regular commercial waterway user that transits the Portal Bridge on an average of two to three round trips per week. There are also some recreational vessels that transit the bridge. The Coast Guard's review of the bridge logs in the last two years shows that bridge openings average 25 per month. Vessels narrower than 55 feet wide would still be able to transit through the narrower opening of the bridge. There are no other known commercial or recreational vessels that will be impacted by this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Regulatory Analysis</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). A regulatory analysis follows. This proposed rule would allow the existing bridge to open to only 55 feet horizontal clearance in the east channel compared to the current horizontal clearance of 88 feet. The west channel would be closed to all navigation. This closure would prevent operation of a commercial tug that tows a 70 feet wide barge because the 55-foot opening is too narrow for the barge to transit safely. This is the only known commercial vessel that would be impacted by this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Affected Population</HD> We anticipate that this proposed rule would only impact a single commercial vessel that would be unable to transit the Amtrak Portal Bridge during construction of the new bridge. There are no other known commercial vessels impacted by this rule. If you believe that there are additional impacted vessels, please submit a public comment providing the vessel(s) size, type, and destination. The Coast Guard did not identify other commercial entities that would be impacted by this proposed rule. Also, we do not anticipate that recreational vessels would be impacted by this proposed rule as the Coast Guard did not identify any recreational vessel that could not transit within the 55-foot horizontal clearance. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Costs</HD> The costs of this proposed rule would be lost revenue incurred by the commercial tug whose barge cannot transit the narrower opening of the existing bridge. The commercial tug has several alternative options to avoid the lost revenue, however. The first option is for the commercial tug company to buy a new barge that is narrow enough to go through the 55-foot bridge opening. Additionally, the commercial barge company could switch the current barge for another barge in their fleet, assuming that barge is compatible with their various tasks. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Benefits</HD> The benefit of this rule is that it allows for the construction of a new bridge to transport the 150,000-200,000 daily passenger train commuters who currently use the bridge. Construction of the new bridge has been approved by New Jersey Transit and is already in progress. The new bridge would allow for trains to travel at up to 90 mph, compared to the current 60 mph allowed by the current bridge. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, the new bridge is not a drawbridge and therefore, should experience less mechanical malfunction leading to fewer delays. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  New Jersey's Portal Bridge, bane of the Northeast Corridor, is due for upgrade—The Washington Post, article written November 15, 2014. </FTNT> <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. To achieve this principle, agencies are required to solicit and consider flexible regulatory proposals and to explain the rationale for their actions to assure that such proposals are given serious consideration. When an agency promulgates a final rule under section 553 of 5 U.S. Code, after being required by that section o ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━