Positive Train Control Systems

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 236</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2023-0064]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AC95</RIN> <SUBJECT>Positive Train Control Systems</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> FRA is proposing to amend certain regulations governing positive train control (PTC) systems. Since December 31, 2020, by law, PTC systems have generally governed rail operations on PTC-mandated main lines, which encompass nearly 59,000 route miles today. Through FRA's oversight and continued engagement with the industry, FRA has found that its existing PTC regulations do not adequately address temporary situations during which PTC technology is not enabled, including after certain initialization failures or in cases where a PTC system needs to be temporarily disabled to facilitate repair, maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, or capital projects. FRA expects PTC systems to be reliable and robust, further reducing the occurrence of initialization failures and outages. This NPRM proposes to establish strict parameters and operating restrictions under which railroads may continue to operate safely in certain necessary scenarios when PTC technology is temporarily not governing rail operations. The purpose of this NPRM is to enable continued, safe operations and improve rail safety by facilitating prompt repairs, upgrades, and restoration of PTC system service. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by December 27, 2024. FRA believes a 60-day comment period is appropriate to allow the public to comment on this proposed rule. FRA will consider comments received after that date to the extent practicable. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Comments related to Docket No. FRA-2023-0064 may be submitted by going to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and following the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name, docket number (FRA-2023-0064), and Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AC95). All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> this includes any personal information. Please see the Privacy Act heading in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document for Privacy Act information related to any submitted comments or materials. <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> and follow the online instructions for accessing the docket. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gabe Neal, Staff Director, Signal, Train Control, and Crossings Division, telephone: 816-516-7168, email: <E T="03">Gabe.Neal@dot.gov;</E> or Stephanie Anderson, Attorney Adviser, telephone: 202-834-0609, email: <E T="03">Stephanie.Anderson@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents for Supplementary Information</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Legal Authority To Prescribe PTC Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Public Participation Prior to the Issuance of the NPRM</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Regulatory Impact and Notices</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 12866 as Amended by Executive Order 14094</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 13272</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Federalism Implications</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. International Trade Impact Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Environmental Impact</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Environmental Justice</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Energy Impact</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Privacy Act Statement</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Tribal Consultation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Rulemaking Summary, 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4)</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> Section 20157 of title 49 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) mandates each Class I railroad, and each entity providing regularly scheduled intercity or commuter rail passenger transportation, to implement an FRA-certified PTC system on: (1) its main lines over which poison- or toxic-by-inhalation hazardous materials are transported, if the line carries five million or more gross tons of any annual traffic; (2) its main lines over which intercity or commuter rail passenger transportation is regularly provided; and (3) any other tracks the Secretary of Transportation (Secretary) prescribes by regulation or order. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> By law, PTC systems must be designed to prevent certain accidents or incidents, including train-to-train collisions, over-speed derailments, incursions into established work zones, and movements of trains through switches left in the wrong position. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, Public Law 110-432, section 104, 122 Stat. 4848 (Oct. 16, 2008), as amended by the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015, Public Law 114-73, 129 Stat. 568 (Oct. 29, 2015); the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act, Public Law 114-94, section 11315(d), 129 Stat. 1312 (Dec. 4, 2015); and the Passenger Rail Expansion and Rail Safety Act of 2021, Public Law 117-58, section 22414, 135 Stat. 429 (Nov. 15, 2021), codified as amended at 49 U.S.C. 20157. <E T="03">See also</E> 49 CFR part 236, subpart I. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See, e.g.,</E> 49 U.S.C. 20157(g)(1), (i)(5); 49 CFR 236.1005 (setting forth the technical specifications). </FTNT> Currently, 37 host railroads  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> —including 7 Class I railroads, 24 entities that provide regularly scheduled intercity or commuter rail passenger transportation (hereinafter referred to as “intercity passenger railroads or commuter railroads,” respectively), and 6 Class II or III, short line, or terminal railroads—are directly subject to the statutory mandate. On December 29, 2020, FRA announced that railroads had fully implemented FRA-certified and interoperable PTC systems on all PTC-mandated main lines. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> 49 U.S.C. 20157(a); 49 CFR 236.1005(b)(7). <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  As this proposed rule primarily focuses on host railroads, FRA references the current number of PTC-mandated <E T="03">host</E> railroads (37). A host railroad is “a railroad that has effective operating control over a segment of track,” and a tenant railroad is “a railroad, other than a host railroad, operating on track upon which a PTC system is required.” <E T="03">See</E> 49 CFR 236.1003(b). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  FRA acknowledges that one Class I railroad (Canadian Pacific Railway) recently acquired a second Class I railroad (Kansas City Southern Railway). However, for purposes of FRA's PTC regulations and related oversight, FRA is currently counting these railroads separately, as they presently submit separate PTC filings and have indicated they will do so unless and until they fully integrate their PTC systems. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Federal Railroad Administration, FRA Announces Landmark Achievement with Full Implementation of Positive Train Control (Dec. 29, 2020), <E T="03">available at https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2020-12/fra1920.pdf.</E> </FTNT> Today, PTC technology is governing rail operations on nearly 59,000 route miles. Based on FRA's oversight of PTC technology since FRA last amended its PTC regulations in 2021, FRA identified three aspects of its existing PTC regulations that warrant revision to address ongoing challenges. Overall, the proposed amendments would benefit the railroad industry, the public, and FRA by facilitating repairs, maintenance, upgrades, and capital improvements; expanding certain railroad informational requirements; reducing costs; and enabling the safe, reliable, and resilient movement of people and goods, while preserving rail safety. This NPRM proposes to establish strict parameters and operating restrictions under which railroads may continue to operate safely in three specific scenarios when PTC technology is temporarily not governing rail operations: 1. When non-revenue passenger equipment needs to operate to a maintenance facility or yard, for the sole purpose of repairing or exchanging PTC technology; 2. When a PTC system needs to be temporarily disabled to facilitate repair, maintenance, an infrastructure upgrade, or a capital project; and 3. When a system-level or widescale problem occurs resulting in multiple trains' PTC systems failing to initialize. FRA's objective in this rulemaking is to establish clear, uniform processes, rather than addressing issues that arise in a reactive and piecemeal manner. FRA expects that establishing predictable, prescriptive processes will both enable continued operations and improve railroad safety by facilitating prompt repairs, upgrades, and restoration of PTC system service and eliminating uncertainty and inconsistent application of FRA's regulations. FRA's proposed parameters and operating restrictions in this NPRM are intended to be sufficiently strict to ensure that railroads and PTC system suppliers and vendors proactively identify and remedy problems before they arise and immediately correct any problems that may surface desp ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 157k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━