Removing Stenciling Requirement for Freight Cars Used for Tourist, Historic, Excursion, Educational, Recreational, or Private Purposes and Not Interchanged

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 215</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0118]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD54</RIN> <SUBJECT>Removing Stenciling Requirement for Freight Cars Used for Tourist, Historic, Excursion, Educational, Recreational, or Private Purposes and Not Interchanged</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 exclude railroad freight cars used exclusively for tourist, historic, excursion, educational, recreational, or private purposes and that are not interchanged from the requirement that all restricted freight cars, including cars more than 50 years old, be stenciled with specific information. </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-2025-0118 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-2025-0118), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD54). 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> Steven Zuiderveen, Railroad Safety Specialist, Office of Railroad Safety, at email: <E T="03">steven.zuiderveen@dot.gov</E> or telephone: (202) 493-6337 or Elliott Gillooly, Attorney Adviser, at email: <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). Title 49 CFR part 215 establishes railroad freight car safety requirements. Some of the requirements contained in part 215 can be updated to reduce burdens, make technical or conforming changes, or otherwise adjust to advancing technology without any adverse effect on railroad safety. FRA proposes in this NPRM to exempt freight cars used for tourist, historic, excursion, educational, recreational, or private purposes (THEERP) from the general stenciling requirement applicable to restricted cars, provided such THEERP cars are not interchanged among railroads, for the reasons discussed in the below section-by-section analysis. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 215.303 Stenciling of Restricted Cars</HD> Section 215.303 currently requires any car described in “§ 215.205(a)” of this part to be stenciled or marked to display certain information relevant to restricted freight cars, such as the car's age and those components needed to completely indicate the basis for the restricted operation of the car. FRA proposes to exempt THEERP cars from this requirement based on requests from the owners and operators of such cars and the review and recommendations of FRA's Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) working group assigned to this topic. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In addition, FRA intends to correct the reference to § 215.205(a), which is a typographical error, with the correct reference to § 215.203(a). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  In April 1996, the RSAC formed the Tourist and Historic Railroads and Private Passenger Car Working Group (Working Group). Since that time, the Working Group has considered numerous issues affecting tourist and historic rail operations and, in 2014, identified issues involving FRA's regulatory treatment of tourist, scenic, historic, excursion, educational or recreational rail operations or private passenger rail car operations, including stenciling requirements. <E T="03">See</E> RSAC Meeting Minutes, available at <E T="03">https://rsac.fra.dot.gov/radcms.rsac/File/DownloadFile?id=44.</E> </FTNT> The proposed exclusion of THEERP freight cars from the general stenciling requirement applicable to restricted cars is intended to reduce burdens on the owners and operators of this equipment. This regulatory relief would incorporate long-standing waivers granted by FRA to individual THEERP owners and operators. This relief would also not diminish safety, as each freight car that is a restricted car, as freight cars are under § 215.203(a) when they become more than 50 years old, is still subject to § 215.203(a) and its safety requirements. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  FRA is publishing an NPRM proposing to revise § 215.203(a) concurrently with this NPRM. Thus, FRA proposes to clarify in both § 215.203 and § 215.303 that THEERP cars will be exempted from stenciling requirements, but not from other requirements applicable to restricted cars. </FTNT> In addition to petitions for waivers from stenciling requirements, FRA has also historically received petitions from many of the same THEERP car owners or operators requesting that FRA waive reflectorization requirements. FRA published an NPRM on the subject of reflectorization on July 21, 2022 (87 FR 43467) and intends that any final rule following from that NPRM will be consistent with the currently proposed amendments to § 215.303. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. 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 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 Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs 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. Railroads (or other owners of THEERP cars) would benefit from this regulatory relief because they would not incur the costs of stenciling and marking cars that are used for tourist, historic, excursion, educational, recreational, or private purposes and not interchanged. In addition, the proposed amendments would reduce costs for the owners of these cars as they would no longer be required to file individual petitions for waivers from the stenciling requirements. <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.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> 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>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</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>4</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 affirms that each amendment proposed in this NPRM has a cost that is “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 (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> requires Federal agencies to consider the effects of the regulatory action on small business and other small entities and to minimize any significant economic impact. Accordingly, DOT policy requires an analysis of the impact of all regulations on small entities, and mandates that agencies strive to lessen any adverse effects on these businesses. The term <E T="03">small entities</E> comprises small businesses and not-for-profit organizations that are independently owned and operated and are not dominant in their fields, and governmental jurisdictions with populations of less than 50,000 (5 U.S.C. 601(6)). <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Public Law 104-121, 110 Stat. 857 (Mar. 29, 1996). </FTNT> No regulatory flexibility analysis is required, however, if the head of an Agency or an appropriate designee certifies that the r ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━