Repealing Special Approval Requirement for Freight Cars More Than 50 Years Old

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 215</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0117]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD46</RIN> <SUBJECT>Repealing Special Approval Requirement for Freight Cars More Than 50 Years Old</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 freight car safety regulations to repeal the requirement for special approval to place or continue a freight car in service if it is more than 50 years old or equipped with any design or type component listed in appendix A to this part. Instead, railroads would be able to continue or place such “overage” cars in service after complying with uniform safety requirements. Those requirements would include comprehensive shop inspections by a designated inspector, single-car air brake testing, recordkeeping, and, as appropriate, stenciling. The proposed requirements are consistent with the most important conditions that FRA now requires through the existing special approval process. Repealing the special approval process and replacing it with the proposed, uniform requirements would provide equivalent safety outcomes while reducing burdens on railroads and eliminating the added delay involved in petitioning FRA for a special approval. </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-2025-0117 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-2025-0117), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD46). 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 reduce the burden on railroads required to maintain older freight cars in service, while maintaining important inspection and testing requirements for those cars. Please see the details of the proposed changes in the below section-by-section analysis. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 215.203—Restricted Cars</HD> Section 215.203 currently restricts the operation of any railroad freight car that is more than 50 years old, and any car of a design or equipped with a component listed in appendix A to part 215, by prohibiting its placement or continuance in service, except under conditions approved by FRA. A railroad is required to petition FRA to obtain the required special approval. The petition currently must be submitted at least 90 days before the car is used and state the following information: (i) The name and principal business address of the petitioning railroad; (ii) the name and address of the entity that controls the operation and maintenance of the car involved; (iii) the number, type, capacity, reporting marks, and car numbers of the cars, their condition, status, and age measured from the date of original construction; (iv) the design, type component, or other item that causes the car to be restricted; (v) the maximum load the cars would carry; (vi) the maximum speed at which the cars would be operated; (vii) that each car has been examined and found to be safe to operate under the conditions set forth in the petition; and (viii) the territorial limits within which the cars are to be operated and the name of each railroad that will receive the cars in interchange. Before FRA makes a decision on a petition, an FRA inspector examines all the cars, or a number of cars representative of all the cars, that are the subject of the railroad's petition for compliance with all Federal safety requirements, including 49 CFR parts 215 (Railroad Freight Car Safety Standards), 231 (Railroad Safety Appliance Standards) and 232 (Brake System Safety Standards). The FRA inspector makes a recommendation following this inspection, and FRA's Safety Board renders a decision based on the petition and the inspector's findings. When approving a railroad's petition, the Safety Board routinely imposes conditions on the placement or continuation of the subject cars in service, such as the completion of a comprehensive shop inspection by qualified personnel, and conditional requirements periodically thereafter. Approvals may also include conditions such as speed limitations, or limitations on the service in which a car or cars may be used. A single-car air brake test (SCABT) may also be required at intervals shorter than generally required by FRA's Brake System Safety Standards in part 232. FRA's proposed amendments preserve the essential requirements of the existing regulation, including a comprehensive mechanical inspection and SCABT before the car is placed or continued in service as a restricted car and every two years thereafter. FRA has preliminarily determined that some information required in a petition under the current regulation is not necessary for a railroad to make the determination that freight cars more than 50 years old are safe to continue in service. Specifically, the proposed amendments would not require railroads to state any speed restrictions placed on the cars or the maximum loads they will carry as a condition of compliance with § 215.203. Generally, speed limitations and loads will be determined in accordance with the type of car, type of commodity, class of track, terrain, intended routes, and railroad operating rules. Regulated entities would be required to maintain records of all required inspections and tests, including a certification that the subject cars are safe for the service in which they will be placed. FRA also proposes to delete one category of restricted car currently included in § 215.203—§ 215.203(a)(3), a railroad freight car that is “[e]quipped with a Duryea underframe constructed before April 1, 1950, except for a caboose which is operated as the last car in a train”—as this category is redundant. Any car meeting the condition that it was built before April 1, 1950 is a car more than 50 years old and is included as a restricted car for that reason, regardless of whether it is equipped with a Duryea underframe. FRA has not identified any reason to exclude Duryea underframe cabooses from the requirements placed on restricted cars, as they now are. FRA proposes to add at § 215.203(b) that “[r]ailroad freight cars approved under a standard such as the Office Manual of the Association of American Railroads' Interchange Rule 88 Increased Life Status process are exempt from the requirements of this section for up to 65 years of service life.” This proposed addition would allow a railroad to place or continue a freight car in service without complying with the requirements of § 215.203(a) only if the car has been approved under an industry standard designed for the safety assessment and maintenance of older cars, which FRA believes will ensure such cars are safe to operate for an additional 15 years beyond the 50-year mark. The industry standards under the Office Manual of the Association of American Railroads' Interchange Rule 88 are more stringent than current FRA requirements for restricted cars and more stringent than any restrictions that FRA proposes in this NPRM. <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 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 within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) determined that this final rule is not a significant regulatory action under section 3(f) of E.O. 12866. FRA proposes to amend its freight car regulations to repeal and replace the requirement for special approval to place or continue a freight car more than 50 years old in service, as it would ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━