Removal of Unnecessary and Outdated Paperwork Reduction Act References

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Parts 209, 213, 217, 219, 227, 229, 230, 232, 238, 239, 240, 241, and 242</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0109]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD22</RIN> <SUBJECT>Removal of Unnecessary and Outdated Paperwork Reduction Act References</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 intends to remove thirteen sections throughout its regulations that unnecessarily recite the approval of information collection requirements by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), state the assigned OMB control number associated with the entire CFR part, and list the sections in that part with information collection requirements. </SUM> <DATES> <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. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Comments related to Docket No. FRA-2025-0109 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-2025-0109), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD22). All comments received will 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> Arlette Mussington, Information Collection Clearance Officer, at email: <E T="03">arlette.mussington@dot.gov</E> or telephone: (571) 609-1285, Joanne Swafford, Information Collection Clearance Officer, at email: <E T="03">joanne.swafford@dot.gov</E> or telephone: (757) 897-9908, or Elliott Gillooly, Attorney Adviser, at <E T="03">elliott.gillooly@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). FRA has identified thirteen sections throughout its regulations that unnecessarily recite the approval of information collection requirements by OMB, state the assigned OMB control number associated with the entire CFR part, and list the sections in that part with information collection requirements. These thirteen sections are unnecessary because the final rules promulgating each regulation generally contained the OMB control number applicable to that part  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and, every three years on a rolling basis, FRA publishes two notices in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> stating its intent to renew each OMB control number. Removing each of the thirteen sections that state OMB control numbers, detailed below in the Section-by-Section Analysis, will prevent potential confusion by persons seeking to understand the scope of a particular OMB-approved control number. The potential confusion arises because most of the sections to be removed also contain lists of all the sections in that part which are covered by the OMB control number. Those lists are updated much less frequently, if at all, than FRA's submissions requesting renewed OMB approval of each control number every three years. In addition, removing these thirteen sections will collectively reduce the amount of CFR text that regulated entities must read and FRA also anticipates that the cost of publishing the CFR will be reduced because the removed sections collectively add pages to the CFR. The most up-to-date catalog of all information collection requirements approved by OMB under a particular control number can easily be reviewed in the notices seeking renewed approval that FRA publishes in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at approximately three-year intervals. Information about approved OMB control numbers is also publicly available at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> Overall, the removal of these sections will reduce burdens while making technical changes without any adverse effect on railroad safety. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The exceptions are parts 227, 230, 241 and 242. While an approved OMB control was not included in final rules creating those parts, the control numbers that were approved for each part were later published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , as detailed in the Section-by-Section Analysis. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 209.337</HD> Section 209.337 states that information collection requirements in part 209 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0529. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 213.19</HD> Section 213.19 states that information collection requirements in part 213 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0010. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 217.13</HD> Section 217.13 states that information collection requirements in part 217 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0035. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 219.21</HD> Section 219.21 states that information collection requirements in part 219 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0526. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> ,is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 227.15</HD> In part 227, “2130-NEW” was provided as an OMB control number placeholder at § 227.15. The current OMB control number for part 227 is 2130-0571, as published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> most recently at 89 FR 46296 (May 28, 2024). This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 229.4</HD> Section 229.4 states that information collection requirements in part 229 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0004. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 230.9</HD> In part 230, § 230.9(a) was reserved for an OMB control number. The current OMB control number for part 230 is 2130-0505, as published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> most recently at 89 FR 63469 (Aug. 5, 2024). This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 232.21</HD> Section 232.21 states that information collection requirements in part 232 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0008. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 238.23</HD> Section 238.23 states that information collection requirements in part 238 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0544. This OMB control number is currently approved and need not be printed in the CFR because it has been previously published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , is displayed on any FRA forms if required, and is publicly viewable at <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRASearch.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 239.15</HD> Section 239.15 states that information collection requirements in part 239 have been assigned OMB control number 2130-0545. This OMB control num ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━