Charter Service

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Transit Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 604</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FTA-2024-0017]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2132-AB38</RIN> <SUBJECT>Charter Service</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is proposing to amend regulations that govern the provision of charter service by recipients of Federal financial assistance. The proposed changes will remove the Federal Financial Assistance Programs listed in an appendix and the guidance in additional appendices and make non-substantive technical edits throughout to remove outdated citations and provide clarity. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments should be filed by March 10, 2025. FTA will consider comments received after that date to the extent practicable. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by docket number FTA-2024-0017, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for sending comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Background documents and comments received may also be viewed at the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For program matters, Danielle Nelson, Office of Program Management, (202) 366-2160 or <E T="03">danielle.nelson@dot.gov.</E> For legal matters, contact Mark Montgomery, Office of Chief Counsel, (202) 366-1017 or <E T="03">mark.montgomery@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 Major Provisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Benefits and Costs</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose and Summary of Regulatory Action</HD> FTA is proposing to amend regulations which govern the provision of charter service by recipients of Federal financial assistance. The charter service regulation protects private charter operators from unauthorized competition from FTA grant recipients. Under the charter rules, with limited exceptions, local transit agencies are restricted from operating chartered service. One of those exceptions applies to charter service provided to a qualified human service organization (QHSO) for the purpose of serving persons with mobility limitations related to advanced age, disability, or low income. Under the current rule, QHSOs receiving funding from one of the Federal programs under appendix A are exempt from the charter registration requirements of the regulation. This appendix, created in 2008, is outdated. Through this rulemaking, FTA proposes to remove appendix A and keep the list of qualifying Federal programs for the QHSO exception current on its website, which will reduce the administrative burden of charter registration for many QHSOs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Statutory Authority</HD> FTA has a statutory mandate to prohibit charter service under 49 U.S.C. 5323(d). The proposed revisions do not make substantive changes to the existing regulations implementing this statutory provision. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of Key Provisions</HD> FTA proposes to remove the outdated list of Federal programs in appendix A. Under the current regulation, QHSOs receiving funding from one of the Federal programs under appendix A are exempt from the charter registration requirements of § 604.15. Appendix A is based on a list of programs from the Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility (CCAM), which is a Federal interagency council that works to coordinate funding and provide expertise on human services transportation for people with disabilities, older adults, and individuals with low income. CCAM established the CCAM Program Inventory, which identifies 130 Federal programs that provide funding for human services transportation for these targeted populations. In 2018 and 2019, CCAM agency representatives determined which programs to include in the CCAM Program Inventory through internal agency program validation efforts and the CCAM Program Analysis Working Sessions. CCAM continually updates this inventory to include new Federal funding sources. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Benefits and Costs</HD> The proposed rule would relocate supplemental information in the appendices of the Charter Service regulation to the FTA website. The rule would change no requirements for regulated entities and therefore has no expected economic effect. FTA has also determined that the proposed rule would not have a significant effect on a substantial number of small entities. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subpart A—General Provisions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.1 Purpose</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.2 Applicability</HD> FTA proposes to update the applicability section of the regulation to remove programs repealed by statute. Specifically, FTA proposes to remove references to the Over the Road Bus Accessibility Program, the Job Access and Reverse Commute Program, and the New Freedom Grant Program, which were repealed under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), Public Law 112-141, on October 1, 2012. <HD SOURCE="HD3">604.3 Definitions</HD> FTA proposes to remove a reference to a provision repealed by statute and amend a statutory citation. Throughout the regulation, FTA proposes to utilize the term “website” rather than the outdated “Web site.” Further, FTA proposes to revise the existing definitions of “program purposes” for clarity. FTA also proposes to revise the existing definition of “qualified human service organization” to more closely align with the definition of “transportation-disadvantaged” under Executive Order 13330, Human Service Transportation Coordination (February 24, 2004), which is the Executive order that created CCAM. These amendments do not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD3">604.4 Charter Service Agreement</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subpart B—Exceptions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.5 Purpose</HD> FTA proposes to remove the undefined term “community-based” from this section for clarity. The term “charter service” is defined under § 604.3 and does not need that qualifier. This change would not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.6 Government Officials on Official Government Business</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.7 Qualified Human Service Organizations</HD> FTA proposes to remove the outdated list of Federal programs in appendix A and clarify in this section that QHSOs receiving funding under one or more of the programs in the CCAM Program Inventory are not required to register on the FTA charter service website to receive charter service from a recipient. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.8 Leasing FTA Funded Equipment and Drivers</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.9 When No Registered Charter Provider Responds to Notice From a Recipient</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.10 Agreement With Registered Charter Providers</HD> FTA does not propose changes to this section. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.11 Petitions to the Administrator</HD> FTA adds clarifying language to this section that does not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.12 Reporting Requirements for All Exceptions</HD> FTA removes an outdated reference that does not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subpart C—Procedures for Registration and Notification</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.13 Registration of Private Charter Operators</HD> FTA proposes to add clarifying language and remove an outdated web address. These amendments do not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Section 604.14 Recipient's Notification to Registered Charter Providers</HD> FTA proposes to remove an outdated web address. The amendment does not impact existing requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subpart D—Registration of Qualified Human Service Organizations and Duties for Recipients With Respect to Chart ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 98k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━