Administrative Updates to the Federal Railroad Administration's State Safety Participation Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 212</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0080]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD07</RIN> <SUBJECT>Administrative Updates to the Federal Railroad Administration's State Safety Participation Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule makes administrative updates to FRA's state safety participation regulations, including updating addresses in those regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective July 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Veronica Chittim, Senior Attorney, Office of Safety Law, Office of the Chief Counsel, FRA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590 (telephone 202-480-3410), <E T="03">veronica.chittim@dot.gov;</E> or Lucinda Henriksen, Senior Advisor, Office of Railroad Safety, FRA (telephone 202-657-2842), <E T="03">lucinda.henriksen@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Consistent with the deregulatory agenda of President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy, which seeks to unleash America's economic prosperity without compromising transportation safety, and as described in more detail below, this rule is making miscellaneous, administrative updates to its state safety participation regulations in 49 CFR part 212. These changes include updating addresses that are no longer valid in part 212. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Part 212</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.3 Definitions</HD> FRA is amending § 212.3(b) to have the <E T="03">Associate Administrator</E> mean the “Associate Administrator for Railroad Safety and Chief Safety Officer.” FRA is updating § 212.3(d) to remove the individual references to discrete safety laws, which are obsolete, and instead to refer to the definition of <E T="03">Federal railroad safety laws</E> in § 209.3. FRA is removing paragraph (g) as unnecessary. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.105 Agreements</HD> FRA is revising paragraph (d)(2) to correct the spelling of the word “delegation” and to make one editorial revision (change the word “particular” to “specific”). FRA is removing existing paragraph (e)(1)(iii) which requires a State's request for an FRA agreement to allow that State to participate in FRA investigative and surveillance activities to contain an opinion of counsel that State funds may be used for purposes of participation in the FRA activities. FRA is removing this requirement because, as a matter of current practice, State participation agreements do not currently contain such language. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.109 Joint Planning of Inspections</HD> FRA is removing and reserving § 212.109. This section was applicable in the early days of the FRA State participation program, but is not currently applicable as FRA does not fund all State inspector activities. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.113 Program Termination</HD> FRA is revising paragraphs (a) and (b) to make editorial corrections (change the phrase “thirty (30) days notice” to “30-days' notice”). <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.115 Enforcement Actions</HD> FRA is amending § 212.115(c) to update references from “FRA Regional Director for Railroad Safety for the FRA region in which the State is located” to “FRA Staff Director for the relevant technical discipline.” FRA will maintain a listing on its website of email addresses for each technical discipline referenced in this rule ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Track and Structures, Motive Power and Equipment) to facilitate communication and submission of required documents to FRA. FRA is removing a reference in § 212.115(c)(2)(ii) to “the Enforcement Division” of the “Office of Chief Counsel,” as that is an outdated reference. FRA is also removing the mailing address for the Office of the Chief Counsel and adding the email address <E T="03">FRALegal@dot.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.201 General Qualifications of State Inspection Personnel</HD> FRA is revising paragraphs (a) through (d) to remove the references to “compliance inspector” and to otherwise streamline the language. First, in paragraph (a) FRA is replacing the reference to “compliance inspectors” with the term “journeyman inspector,” which is commonly understood to refer to a fully trained, qualified, and experienced railroad safety inspector. In paragraphs (b) through (d), FRA is removing the references to “compliance inspector” and “apprentice inspector” to streamline the language of each paragraph. No substantive change is intended. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.203 Track Inspector</HD> FRA is revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance.” These are editorial revisions intended to simplify the regulatory language and the revisions make no substantive changes to this paragraph. FRA is also making an editorial correction to paragraph (b) and adding a reference to FRA's Railroad Workplace Safety Regulations (49 CFR part 214) in paragraph (c) as FRA issued that regulation since part 212 was last updated. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.207 Signal and Train Control (S&TC) Inspector</HD> FRA is revising the title of § 212.207 and paragraphs (a), (b), and (c) to provide a shorthand reference to the phrase “signal and train control” ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> S&TC). Consistent with the edits to § 212.203, FRA is also revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance.” These are editorial revisions intended to simplify the regulatory language and the revisions make no substantive changes to this paragraph. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.209 Train Control Inspector</HD> FRA is removing and reserving this section because it is unnecessary given § 212.207. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.211 Apprentice S&TC Inspector</HD> Consistent with the edits in § 212.207, FRA is revising the title of § 212.211 and paragraph (a) to provide a shorthand reference to the phrase “signal and train control.” <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.213 Motive Power and Equipment (MP&E) Inspector</HD> Consistent with the edits in § 212.203, FRA is revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance.” FRA is also revising paragraph (a) to include a reference to 49 CFR part 224 (Reflectorization of Rail Freight Rolling Stock) as FRA issued that regulation since part 212 was last updated. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.215 Locomotive Inspector</HD> FRA is removing and reserving this section because locomotive inspectors are considered MP&E inspectors under § 212.213 and as such, this section is unnecessary. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.217 Car Inspector</HD> FRA is removing and reserving this section because car inspectors are considered MP&E inspectors under § 212.213 and as such, this section is unnecessary. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.221 Operating Practices Inspector</HD> Consistent with the edits in §§ 212.203 and 212.213, FRA is revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance.” FRA is also revising paragraph (a) to include references to parts 240 and 242 as FRA issued those regulations since part 212 was last updated. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.223 Operating Practices Compliance Inspector</HD> FRA is removing and reserving this section because the term “compliance inspector” is outdated and operating practices inspectors are addressed in § 212.221. <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.227 Hazardous Materials Inspector</HD> Consistent with the edits in §§ 212.203, 212.213, and 212.221, FRA is revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance.” <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.231 Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Inspector</HD> To reflect the RRS reorganization, FRA is revising the title of this section and all references to “highway-rail grade crossing inspector” in the section to “grade crossing and trespasser outreach inspector.” Consistent with the edits in §§ 212.203, 212.213, 212.221, and 212.227, FRA is also revising paragraph (a) to remove the phrases “the institution of” and “to promote compliance” and consistent with the changes to § 212.207, FRA is revising paragraph (d) to refer to a “State S&TC inspector.” <HD SOURCE="HD3">§ 212.233 Apprentice Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Inspector</HD> Consistent with the edits to § 212.231, FRA is revising the title of this section to “Apprentice grade crossing and trespasser inspector” and is revising the inspector reference in paragraph (a) to be consistent with § 212.231. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Public Participation</HD> Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), an agency may waive the normal notice and comment procedures if the action is a rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice. 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(A). Additionally, under the APA, an agency may waive notice and comment procedures when the agency for good cause finds that notice and public procedure are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest. 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B). Since this final rule merely makes miscellaneous, administrative updates to the CFR, such as updating web addresses, it would not benefit from public comment, and notice and comment is not necessary. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Regulatory Impact and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review) and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures</HD> FRA has evaluated this final rule in accordance with E.O. 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review (58 FR 51735, Oct. 4, 1993), and DOT Order 2100.6B, Policies and Procedures for Rulemaking (Mar. 10, 2025). The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━