Rail Transit Roadway Worker Protection

<RULE> 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is publishing a final rule for minimum safety standards for rail transit roadway worker protection (RWP) to ensure the safe operation of public transportation systems and to prevent safety events, fatalities, and injuries to transit workers who may access the roadway in the performance of work. This final rule applies 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. This final rule sets 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 are 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. This final rule requires SSOAs to oversee and enforce implementation of the RWP program requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The effective date of this final rule is December 2, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> FTA's Office of Transit Safety and Oversight (TSO) will host a webinar to discuss the requirements of the RWP final rule. Please visit <E T="03">https://www.transit.dot.gov/TSOWebinars</E> to register for webinars and for information about future webinars. FTA is committed to providing equal access for all webinar participants. If you need alternative formats, options, or services, contact <E T="03">FTA-Knowledge@dot.gov</E> at least three business days prior to the event. If you have any questions, please email <E T="03">FTA-Knowledge@dot.gov.</E> <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="FP1-2">C. Summary of Key Provisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Summary of Economic Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Response to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. General</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Section 671.1—Purpose and Applicability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Section 671.3—Policy</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Section 671.5—Definitions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Section 671.11—RWP Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Section 671.13—RWP Manual</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Section 671.21—Rail Transit Worker</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Section 671.23—Transit Worker</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Section 671.25—State Safety Oversight Agency</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Section 671.31—Roadway Worker in Charge Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Section 671.33—Job Safety Briefing Policies</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Section 671.35—Lone Worker</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">M. Section 671.37—Good Faith Safety Challenge</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">N. Section 671.39—Risk-Based Redundant Protections</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">O. Section 671.41—RWP Training and Qualification Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">P. Section 671.43—RWP Compliance Monitoring Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Q. Section 671.51—Recordkeeping</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">R. Benefits and Costs</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 Systems (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. In general, as a result of the first two steps, FTA may develop and advance appropriate mitigations to address a safety hazard, such as 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 roadway worker protection (RWP) safety concern as a topic for analysis. As part of FTA's assessment of the safety risk, FTA reviewed the rail transit industry's existing approaches to RWP. This review showed 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 determined that a Federal baseline RWP program is an appropriate mitigation and is issuing this regulation to reduce fatalities and serious injury events involving rail transit workers that must access the roadway in the performance of their work. This final rule requires rail transit agencies (RTAs) covered by the State Safety Oversight (SSO) program under 49 CFR part 674 (part 674) to implement a baseline RWP program to provide a standardized and consistent approach to protecting roadway workers industry-wide, overseen and enforced by State Safety Oversight Agencies (SSOAs). This final rule prohibits the use of individual rail transit vehicle detection as a sole form of protection for workers on the roadway. It sets requirements for RTAs to conduct a safety risk assessment, use their existing documented SRM processes required under the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans (PTASP) regulation at 49 CFR part 673 (part 673), to identify and establish redundant protections for each category of work that 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 SSOA must review and approve the RTA's RWP program, including the safety risk assessment and redundant protections. The safety risk assessment must be consistent with the RTA's Agency Safety Plan (ASP) and the SSOA's program standard. RTAs may supplement the safety risk assessment with engineering assessments, inputs from the Safety Assurance process established under § 673.27, the results of safety event investigations, and other SRM strategies and approaches. To ensure effective implementation and oversight of the RWP program and redundant protections, this final rule also requires 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 Act (FAST Act) (Pub. L. 114-94), and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, enacted as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Pub. L. 117-58). FTA is authorized to regulate public transportation systems that receive Federal financial assistance under Chapter 53 of Title 49, United States Code (U.S.C.). FTA's safety program is authorized by 49 U.S.C. 5329. 49 U.S.C. 5329(f)(7) authorizes FTA to issue rules to carry out the Public Transportation Safety Program, and 49 U.S.C. 5329(b)(2) directs FTA to develop and implement a National Public Transportation Safety Plan (National Safety Plan) 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 safety performance (82 FR 5628). Subsequently, on April 10, 2024, FTA published an updated version of the National Safety Plan (89 FR 25316). While FTA has previously published a National Safety Plan document that includes only voluntary standards, 49 U.S.C. 5329(f) provides FTA with the discretion and authority to issue mandatory minimum standards to ensure the safe operation of public transportation systems that consider, to the extent practicable, relevant recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), best practices standards developed by the public transportation industry, a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 436k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━