Hazardous Materials: Reducing Undue Paperwork Burdens to Domestic Carriers

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 172</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2025-0092 (HM-268D)]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2137-AG06</RIN> <SUBJECT>Hazardous Materials: Reducing Undue Paperwork Burdens to Domestic Carriers</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This NPRM proposes to revise the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to provide domestic carriers the option to maintain electronic copies of emergency response information rather than requiring a hard copy printed on paper. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by the Docket Number PHMSA-2025-0092 using any of the following methods: <E T="03">E-Gov Web: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This site allows the public to enter comments on any <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice issued by any agency. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management System: 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:</E> U.S. DOT Docket Management System: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Fax:</E> 1-202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Please include the docket number PHMSA-2025-0092 at the beginning of your comments. If you submit your comments by mail, submit two copies. If you wish to receive confirmation that PHMSA received your comments, include a self-addressed stamped postcard. Internet users may submit comments at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <NOTE> <HD SOURCE="HED">Note:</HD> Comments are posted without changes or edits to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. There is a privacy statement published on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </NOTE> <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">https://www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. It is important that you clearly designate the comments submitted as CBI if: your comments responsive to this document contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private; you actually treat such information as private; and your comment is relevant or responsive to this notice. You may ask PHMSA to provide confidential treatment to information you give to the agency by taking the following steps: (1) mark each page of the original document submission containing CBI as “Confidential”; (2) send PHMSA, along with the original document, a second copy of the original document with the CBI deleted; and (3) explain why the information that you are submitting is CBI. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Steven Andrews, Standards and Rulemaking Division, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), 2nd Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, or by email at <E T="03">steven.andrews@dot.gov.</E> Any materials PHMSA receives that is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket. Alternatively, you may review the documents in person at the street address listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Andrews, Transportation Regulations Specialist, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE Washington, DC 20590, 202-366-8553, <E T="03">steven.andrews@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Discussion</HD> PHMSA is proposing to revise Part 172 of Chapter I of Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Specifically, PHMSA is proposing to revise § 172.602 “Emergency response information.” PHMSA has preliminarily determined this provision is unduly burdensome as written. The requirements for emergency response information that must accompany hazardous materials during transportation are outlined in § 172.602. This section mandates that the emergency response information include details such as the basic description of the hazardous material, immediate health risks, and emergency procedures. This information is also required to be accessible in the event of a hazardous materials incident. PHMSA received a petition for rulemaking  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> from the Council on the Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles (COSTHA) on February 10, 2022, requesting that PHMSA revise § 172.602 to permit the use of electronic emergency response information. In its petition, COSTHA notes that the availability of electronic tablets, cell phones, and tracking devices provides access to emergency response information in an electronic format. The request to allow the use of electronic emergency response information would give drivers immediate access to this information on an electronic device which they could display to an inspector. COSTHA also notes that the Emergency Response Guidebook (ERG) app is free to download on any device, is easy to use and contains the same information as the printed document. The petition for rulemaking was accepted by PHMSA on November 2, 2022. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  P-1764—Council on the Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles (COSTHA)—PHMSA-2022-0028. </FTNT> PHMSA expects that allowing industry the option to use electronic emergency response information would reduce the regulatory burden on hazardous materials carriers by allowing for the emergency response information to be stored electronically. In this NPRM, PHMSA is proposing to revise § 172.602 to allow for emergency response information to be saved and presented in an electronic format rather than relying solely on printed copies. PHMSA does not expect the proposed revisions will have any adverse impact on safety. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Regulatory Analysis and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Legal Authority</HD> This proposed rule is published under the authority of the Secretary of Transportation set forth in the Federal Hazardous Materials Transportation Laws (49 U.S.C. 5101 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and delegated to the PHMSA Administrator pursuant to 49 CFR 1.97. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Executive Order 12866; Regulatory Planning and Review</HD> Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 (“Regulatory Planning and Review”), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> as implemented by DOT Order 2100.6B (“Policies and Procedures for Rulemaking”), requires agencies to regulate in the “most cost-effective manner,” to make a “reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify its costs,” and to develop regulations that “impose the least burden on society.” DOT Order 2100.6B specifies that regulations should generally “not be issued unless their benefits are expected to exceed their costs.” In arriving at those conclusions, E.O. 12866 requires that agencies should consider “both quantifiable measures . . . and qualitative measures of costs and benefits that are difficult to quantify” and “maximize net benefits . . . unless a statute requires another regulatory approach.” E.O. 12866 also requires that “agencies should assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives, including the alternative of not regulating.” DOT Order 2100.6B directs that PHMSA and other Operating Administrations must generally choose the “least costly regulatory alternative that achieves the relevant objectives” unless required by law or compelling safety need. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  58 FR 51735 (Oct. 4, 1993). </FTNT> E.O. 12866 and DOT Order 2100.6B also require that PHMSA submit “significant regulatory actions” to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. This proposed rule is a not significant regulatory action pursuant to E.O. 12866; it also has not designated this rule as a “major rule” as defined by the Congressional Review Act (5 U.S.C. 801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). PHMSA has complied with E.O. 12866 as implemented by DOT Order 2100.6B and made a preliminarily determination that this proposed rule may result in cost savings by providing greater flexibility to shippers and carriers of hazardous materials to meet emergency response requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Executive Orders 14192 and 14219</HD> This proposed rule, if finalized as proposed, is expected to be an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> PHMSA seeks data that would be helpful to generate an estimate of the cost savings from this rule. PHMSA's initial estimates are that the total costs of the rule on the regulated community will be less than zero. Nor does this propo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━