Enhancing Railroad Discretion in Sounding Locomotive Horns at Passenger Stations

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 222</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0128]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD18</RIN> <SUBJECT>Enhancing Railroad Discretion in Sounding Locomotive Horns at Passenger Stations</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 proposes to amend its safety standards related to the use of the locomotive horn to clarify that no Federal regulation requires a railroad to sound a locomotive horn because of the presence of a passenger station. The proposed rule would clarify that a railroad has discretion to determine policies for sounding a locomotive horn at a passenger station through railroad operating rules. The proposed rule would also provide that if a railroad decides to sound a locomotive horn at a passenger station, the minimum sound level requirements in FRA's <E T="03">Railroad Locomotive Safety Standards</E> would not apply to the sound produced by the horn. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the proposed rule must be received by September 2, 2025. FRA may consider comments received after that date, but only to the extent practicable. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Comments related to Docket No. FRA-2025-0128 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-2025-0128), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD18). All comments received would 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> James Payne, Staff Director, Grade Crossing and Trespasser Outreach, FRA, telephone: (202) 441-2787, email: <E T="03">James.Payne@dot.gov;</E> or Kathryn Gresham, Attorney Adviser, FRA, telephone: (202) 577- 7142, email: <E T="03">Kathryn.Gresham@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, FRA is reviewing its regulatory requirements in parts 200 through 299 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The requirements related to the use of locomotive horns by FRA-regulated entities are established in 49 CFR part 222, “Use of Locomotive Horns at Public Highway-Rail Grade Crossings.” Although part 222 focuses on the use of locomotive horns at public highway-rail grade crossings, it also provides clarification regarding the use of locomotive horns in emergencies and other situations. Some of the requirements contained in part 222 could be updated to reduce burdens, make technical or conforming changes, or otherwise adjust to advancing technology without any adverse effect on railroad safety. The amendment to part 222 proposed in this NPRM aims to address public concerns about excessive horn sounding, to provide greater flexibility to railroads regarding Federal requirements, and to eliminate any confusion by clarifying that no Federal regulation requires the sounding of a locomotive horn at a passenger station. Please review the Section-by-Section Analysis below for the relevant information related to each proposed change. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 222.9 Definitions</HD> FRA proposes to add a definition of “passenger station” to mean a location designated in a railroad's timetable where passengers are regularly scheduled to get on or off any train, adopting the same definition of “passenger station” in § 238.5 of FRA's <E T="03">Passenger Equipment Safety Standards.</E> FRA proposes to add this definition to clarify specific locations that are not subject to a Federal requirement for sounding of the locomotive horn. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 222.23 How does this regulation affect sounding of a horn during an emergency or other situations?</HD> This proposed rule would revise the language of 49 CFR 222.23 to clarify that no Federal regulation requires a railroad to sound a locomotive horn because of the presence of a passenger station. Unless other conditions or circumstances trigger Federal regulations requiring the use of a locomotive horn, such as providing audible warning from trains or locomotives that approach roadway workers and roadway maintenance machines as required under 49 CFR 214.339, a railroad has discretion over the decision to sound a locomotive horn at a passenger station and the relevant railroad operating rules it adopts to address such a situation. If a railroad decides to sound a locomotive horn at a passenger station at its own discretion, under this proposed rule, the minimum sound level requirements in 49 CFR 229.129(a) would not apply to the sound produced by the horn. Historically, railroads have sounded the locomotive horn at passenger stations as one method of warning passengers of approaching trains and safeguarding passenger movements at passenger stations. The railroad industry has developed additional methods for providing such warning to passengers and safeguarding their movements at passenger stations, including advancements in station design, providing physical separation of passengers from train movements, and providing other forms of warnings and measures for increasing situational awareness, including both audible and visual station announcements. In the context of this more robust array of methods to warn passengers of approaching trains and to safeguard passenger movements at passenger stations, and in consideration that different methods may be employed depending on whether trains are stopping at a station, moving through a station without stopping, or moving over tracks adjacent to a station, the proposed rule would enhance a railroad's discretion in using the locomotive horn at passenger stations. FRA invites comment on the effectiveness of current railroad operating rules and procedures that address locomotive horn sounding at passenger stations and other methods for ensuring safety at passenger stations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Regulatory Impact and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Orders (E.O.) 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review) and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures</HD> FRA has considered the impact of this NPRM under E.O. 12866 (58 FR 51735, Oct. 4, 1993), Regulatory Planning and Review, and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) determined that this NPRM is not a significant regulatory action under section 3(f) of E.O. 12866. FRA analyzed the potential costs and benefits of this proposed rule. This proposed rule would provide transparency regarding Federal locomotive horn sounding requirements and eliminate any confusion to the public, rail labor organizations, and the rail industry by clarifying that no Federal regulation requires the sounding of a locomotive horn because of the presence of a passenger station. Additionally, this proposed rule would allow railroads the discretion to sound a locomotive horn without being subject to the minimum sound level requirements for locomotive horns in 49 CFR part 229. This rule would provide railroads greater flexibility to operate their businesses without adversely impacting railroad safety. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. E.O. 14192 (Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation)</HD> E.O. 14192 (90 FR 9065, Jan. 31, 2025), Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation, requires that for “each new [E.O. 14192 regulatory action] issued, at least ten prior regulations be identified for elimination.”  <FTREF/> <SU>1</SU> Implementation guidance for E.O. 14192 issued by OMB (Memorandum M-25-20, Mar. 26, 2025) defines two different types of E.O. 14192 actions: an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action, and an E.O. 14192 regulatory action. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Executive Office of the President. <E T="03"> Executive Order 14192 of January 31, 2025. Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation. </E> 90 FR 9065-9067. Feb. 6, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Executive Office of the President. Office of Management and Budget. <E T="03">Guidance Implementing Section 3 of Executive Order 14192, Titled “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation.</E> ” Memorandum M-25-20. Mar. 26, 2025. </FTNT> An E.O. 14192 deregulatory action is defined as “an action that has been finalized and has total costs less than zero.” This proposed rulemaking is expected to have total costs less than zero, and therefore it would be considered an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action upon issuance of a final rule. While FRA is confident that each change proposed in this NPRM has a cost that is negligible or “less than zero” consistent with E.O. 14192, FRA requests comment on the extent of the cost savings for the changes proposed in this NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Regulatory Flexibility Act and E.O. 13272</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act ( ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━