National Transit Database Reporting Changes and Clarifications, 14189-14194 [2019-06943]

Agencies

• Federal Transit Administration
• DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 68 (Tuesday, April 9, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 14189-14194]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-06943]


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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Federal Transit Administration

[Docket No. FTA-2018-0010]


National Transit Database Reporting Changes and Clarifications

AGENCY: Federal Transit Administration, DOT.

ACTION: Notice; request for comments.

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SUMMARY: This notice provides information on proposed changes and 
clarifications to the National Transit Database (NTD) reporting 
requirements. All proposed changes and clarifications will be effective 
for report year 2019 (beginning September 2019).

DATES: Comments are due by June 10, 2019. FTA will consider late 
comments to the extent practicable.

ADDRESSES: Please identify your submission by Docket Number (FTA-

[[Page 14190]]

2018-0010) through one of the following methods:
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: Submit electronic comments and 
other data to https://www.regulations.gov.
     U.S. Mail: Send comments to Docket Management Facility; 
U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West 
Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001.
     Hand Delivery or Courier: Take comments to Docket 
Management Facility, in Room W12-140 of the West Building, Ground 
Floor, at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9:00 a.m. 
and 5:00 p.m. E.T., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.
     Fax: Fax comments to Docket Management Facility, U.S. 
Department of Transportation, at (202) 493-2251.
    Instructions: You must include the agency name (Federal Transit 
Administration) and Docket Number (FTA-2018-0010) for this notice, at 
the beginning of your comments. If sent by mail, submit two copies of 
your comments. You may review U.S. DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement 
published in the Federal Register on April 11, 2000, at 65 FR 19477-8 
or https://DocketsInfo.dot.gov.
    Electronic Access and Filing: This document and all comments 
received may be viewed online through the Federal rulemaking portal at 
https://www.regulations.gov or at the street address listed above. 
Electronic submission and retrieval help and guidelines are available 
on the website. It is available 24 hours each day, 365 days a year. 
Please follow the instructions. An electronic copy of this document may 
also be downloaded from the Office of the Federal Register's home page 
at https://www.federalregister.gov.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Maggie Schilling, National Transit 
Database Program Manager, FTA Office of Budget and Policy, (202) 366-
2054 or [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Table of Contents

A. Background and Overview
B. Additional Types of Service
    a. New Type of Service Classification for Demand Responsive 
Service Provided by Transportation Network Companies
    b. New Type of Service To Distinguish Demand Response Taxi 
Service
C. Changes to the A-30 Revenue Vehicle Asset forms
    a. Add New Data Element To Identify Automated Vehicles
    b. New Reporting on Safety Equipment on Rail Transit Vehicles
D. Changes to the A-20--Adjust the Reporting Categories for Special 
Track Work
E. Changes to the D-10--New Reporting on the Use of Automatic 
Passenger Counters
F. Changes to the FFA-10--New Reporting on Vehicle Revenue Miles by 
State for Urbanized Area Reporters
G. Changes to Safety Event Reporting
    a. Clarification of Reportable Suicide Attempts
    b. Modify Data Collection on Vehicles Involved in Reportable 
Safety Events
    c. Add information on Drug and Alcohol Post-Accident Testing
H. Clarification on Reporting Service Information on a Temporary Bus 
Bridge
I. Clarification of Incidental Use for Transit Asset Reporting
J. Allow Separate Mode Reporting for Geographically and Resource 
Separated Modes
K. Clarification on Commuter Service Survey Standards
L. Clarification on Reporting Linear Miles and Track Miles to the 
Asset Inventory
M. Clarification of Rural Financial Data Reporting Requirement.

A. Background and Overview

    The National Transit Database (NTD) was established by Congress to 
be the Nation's primary source for information and statistics on the 
transit systems of the United States. Recipients and beneficiaries of 
Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grants under either the Urbanized 
Area Formula Program (49 U.S.C. 5307) or Rural Area Formula Program (49 
U.S.C. 5311) are required by law to report to the NTD.
    Based on feedback from NTD stakeholders and the transit industry, 
FTA is proposing to make a number of reporting changes and 
clarifications to NTD reporting requirements. FTA seeks comment on the 
proposed changes and clarifications described below. Anticipated 
industry burden estimates and proposed implementation timelines are 
included in the discussion of each item.

B. Additional Types of Service

    The NTD currently collects financial and service information by 
mode (e.g., heavy rail, light rail, motorbus, commuter bus, etc.) and 
type of service (purchased transportation and directly operated 
transportation). Reporters must report separate service and financial 
information for each mode and type of service they operate. There are 
two types of service reported to the NTD: Directly operated (DO) and 
purchased transportation (PT). FTA is proposing the addition of two new 
types of service described below: Taxi (TX) and transportation network 
company (TN).
    FTA proposes implementing these new types of service for the 2019 
report year.

a. New Type of Service for Reportable Taxi Service

    49 U.S.C. 5302 states that public transportation must be ``regular, 
continuing shared-ride surface transportation services that are open to 
the general public . . .''. FTA uses this definition to consider 
whether service is eligible to be reported to the NTD for inclusion in 
the data sets used by FTA to apportion formula grants.
    Under this definition, taxi service is not considered public 
transportation; however, some agencies may contract with a taxi company 
to provide overflow capacity for their demand response service. In 
these arrangements, the request for the ride is dispatched through the 
agency's demand response service and the taxi company simply provides 
the vehicle for the demand response ride(s). These trips are reported 
to the NTD using the Demand Response Taxi (DT) mode.
    FTA is proposing to eliminate the Demand Response Taxi (DT) mode 
and replace it with a type of service designation. Agencies would 
report current Demand Response Taxi (DT) rides as Demand Response (DR) 
rides with the type of service designation of Taxi (TX) defined as 
follows: The Taxi type of service is demand response transportation 
service provided by a private taxi company on behalf of a public 
transportation agency using a non-dedicated fleet. Services are 
directly dispatched by the agency and provided using the taxi company's 
drivers and vehicles.
    Although this represents a change to the way the data would be 
captured in the system, it does not impact the reporting burden. Data 
that is reported to the NTD as ``Demand Response Taxi--Purchased 
Transportation'' would simply be relabeled as ``Demand Response--
Taxi,'' with no change to the reporting requirements. FTA believes that 
this change will more precisely reflect that trips provided by this 
service are still demand response trips coordinated through a transit 
agency's dispatch system, but delivered by a taxi company.

b. New Type of Service for Demand Responsive Service Provided by 
Transportation Network Companies

    A growing number of transit agencies are establishing formal 
arrangements with transportation network companies (TNCs) to support 
first mile/last mile and/or demand responsive services to their riders. 
Reporters have asked for clarification on how to report these services 
to meet their NTD reporting obligations and to include data from

[[Page 14191]]

these services in the annual apportionment of formula funds. In 
addition, industry stakeholders have expressed a desire to use NTD data 
to identify these types of arrangements. In response to these needs, 
FTA is proposing the addition of a new type of service that would 
identify eligible public transportation provided by TNCs.
    In assessing the best way to collect this information for both 
reporters and stakeholders, FTA considered two options: (1) The 
creation of a new mode of service, or (2) the creation of a new type of 
service for public transportation provided by TNCs. The burden for 
reporters would be identical in both cases. The creation of a new mode 
or type of service would require agencies reporting on public 
transportation provided by TNCs to separate the financial and operating 
information for these services from their other modes or types of 
service for NTD reporting.
    While both approaches would allow agencies to report their services 
separately and provide transparency to stakeholders, FTA proposes to 
distinguish these services by type of service rather than mode because 
of the reporting flexibility provided by this option. While many of the 
current service agreements between transit agencies and TNCs are 
similar in nature to the Demand Response or Demand Response Taxi modes 
currently collected by the NTD, providing the flexibility for agencies 
to expand these types of arrangements into other modes of service would 
be possible by organizing the data by type of service rather than mode.
    The FTA proposes a new type of service to collect information on 
transit provided by TNCs defined as follows: The Transportation Network 
Company (TN) type of service is for demand response transportation 
service provided by a transportation network company on behalf of a 
public transportation agency using a non-dedicated fleet. Services are 
open to the general public and are dispatched by the transportation 
network company using a mobile application. The FTA notes that several 
partnerships between TNCs and transit systems are currently funded as 
pilot programs through the Mobility on Demand Sandbox Program. As pilot 
programs are not ``regular and continuing,'' they are not currently 
reportable to the NTD. The new ``TN'' type of service, however, will be 
available for use for any partnership agreements that advance beyond 
the pilot stage, and which meet the definition of public 
transportation, including potential pilot projects originally funded 
through the FTA Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Program.

C. Changes to the A-30 Revenue Vehicle Asset Forms

a. Add New Data Element To Identify Automated Vehicles

    In response to the growth in automated vehicle technology, FTA 
proposes adding a new data element to the A-30 Revenue Vehicle 
Inventory form to identify automated or autonomous vehicles. This 
information would be collected through a check box available by fleet 
to indicate if the vehicle fleet is comprised of automated vehicles. 
Agencies operating an automated or autonomous fleet of vehicles, be 
they rail or roadway vehicles, would check the box to indicate the 
fleet as such. If the fleet is not automated or autonomous, reporters 
would leave this box empty.
    In addition, FTA proposes the following definition, which aligns 
with level 4 of the SAE International standard of automation, for 
inclusion in the NTD glossary to clarify this new requirement: A 
vehicle that is capable of performing all driving functions without 
human input under certain conditions.
    The FTA estimates that the burden for this additional data element 
is negligible and proposes implementing this change in report year 
2019.
    The FTA considered proposing a new mode for either autonomous rail 
or autonomous roadway shuttle operations, but did not believe that this 
would benefit NTD stakeholders. The FTA welcomes comments, however, on 
whether it should reconsider creating a separate mode for autonomous 
vehicles, rather than simply recording autonomous vehicles on the asset 
inventory. Currently, autonomous rail vehicles, commonly called 
``people movers'' are classified in the monorail/automated guideway 
(mode ``MG'') mode within the NTD. This mode also includes the 
Morgantown (West Virginia) personal rapid transit system as well as the 
Seattle Monorail System, which does not operate autonomously. A transit 
agency deploying an autonomous train in the future would classify those 
operations in the relevant mode, e.g. the heavy rail (mode ``HR'') 
mode. Likewise, under current policy, a transit system operating an 
autonomous roadway vehicle with a fixed route would generally be 
classified in the existing bus (mode ``MB'') mode. The FTA currently 
proposes to only collect whether autonomous vehicles capable of level 4 
operations are in the fleet, and seeks comment on whether it should 
begin collecting data on the duration of autonomous operations either 
within the various existing modes, or as one more separate mode.

b. New Reporting on Safety Equipment on Rail Transit Vehicles

    The FTA proposes the collection of the following new data elements 
on the A-30 Revenue Vehicle Inventory form for rail transit vehicle 
types, unless otherwise specified below:
    A. Number of fleet vehicles with event data recorders based on IEEE 
1482.1 standard;
    B. Number of fleet vehicles with emergency Lighting System Design 
based on APTA RT-S-VIM-20-10 standard;
    C. Number of fleet vehicles with emergency signage based on APTA 
RT-S-VIM-021-10 standard;
    D. Number of fleet vehicles with low-location Emergency Path 
Marking based on APTA RT-S-VIM-022-10 standard.
    These safety equipment standards are identified for inclusion in 
the National Safety Program Plan requirements of the MAP-21 and FAST 
Act legislation. As such, they are also included in FTA's National 
Safety Plan. These standards also address National Transportation 
Safety Board (NTSB) open recommendations to FTA. The FTA would use this 
additional data to assess industry risk levels and to inform accident 
investigations.
    This new reporting would apply to all rail transit vehicle types. 
The FTA currently recognizes 11 rail transit vehicle types: Automated 
guideway vehicle (AG); cable car (CC); heavy rail passenger car (HR); 
light rail vehicle (LR); inclined plane vehicle (IP); monorail/
automated guideway (MO); commuter rail locomotive (RL); commuter rail 
passenger coach (RP); commuter rail, self-propelled passenger car (RS); 
streetcar (SR) and, vintage trolley (VT).
    The FTA estimates that the burden to report this information is 
minimal, as FTA believes that rail fleet maintenance departments 
already track this information as part of their overall maintenance 
programs. The FTA welcomes comments on whether reporting these data for 
rail fleets would in fact be a de minimis burden. The FTA emphasizes 
that it is not proposing to collect these data for roadway vehicle 
fleets.

D. Changes to the A-20--Adjust the Reporting Categories for Special 
Trackwork

    In report year 2018, transit agencies must begin reporting expanded 
asset data to the NTD. The new asset forms were open in the NTD system 
for

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optional reporting in report year 2017. Approximately 14% of rail 
agencies reported their track and guideway assets on a voluntary basis 
in the optional reporting year.
    After completing the optional report year, FTA received several 
requests from rail agencies to change the special track work categories 
available on the A-20 form. Agencies felt the current categories did 
not allow them to properly report their special trackwork to the NTD. 
In response to these requests, FTA is proposing to remove one category, 
add three new categories, and rename an existing category.
    The A-20 form currently collects the following special track work 
categories: Half grand union, single turnout, single crossover, and 
double diamond crossover. The FTA is proposing the following 
modifications (1) remove half grand union, (2) rename double diamond 
crossover to double crossover, and (3) include three new special track 
work categories: Slip switch, lapped turnout, and rail crossing.
    Proposed definitions and illustrations of the proposed category 
changes can be viewed on the NTD website at https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/ntd-asset-inventory-module.

E. Reporting on the Use of Automatic Passenger Counters

    The FTA is proposing the inclusion of a new data element on the D-
10 CEO Certification form to collect information on the use of 
Automatic Passenger Counters (APC). The proposed reporting would be 
yes/no selection inquiring whether agencies currently use APC equipment 
on their transit fleet. Reporters using APC equipment to report 
ridership and passenger miles travelled information to the NTD are 
currently required to certify their equipment with the FTA once every 3 
years. The FTA is also proposing a new data field on the D-10 to record 
the date of the agency's last APC certification approval. This field 
would be populated by the FTA for record keeping and would not require 
additional data input from the reporter.

F. New Reporting on Vehicle Revenue Miles by State for Urbanized Area 
Reporters

    The FTA receives frequent requests from policy makers to identify 
the amount of transit service provided in each state. NTD currently 
collects the breakdown of vehicle revenue miles (VRM) provided in each 
state for rural agencies operating across state lines. However, urban 
reporters that operate in two or more states do not provide the same 
breakdown. The FTA is proposing an amendment to the FFA-10 that would 
allow reporters to provide their VRM to allocate their VRM by mode and 
state on the FFA-10.

G. Changes to Safety Event Reporting

a. Clarification of Reportable Attempted Suicides
    The FTA has identified inconsistencies in the way agencies report 
an attempted suicide to the NTD. To improve data quality, FTA is 
providing a clarification of a reportable attempted suicide.
    Attempted suicides are reported to the NTD as a security event. 
Current guidance on how to report this information can be found in the 
2018 Safety Manual located on the NTD website: www.transit.dot.gov/ntd. 
However, if an attempted suicide results in an injury requiring 
immediate medical transport away from the transit property, it is 
reportable as a major event.
    In some cases, an agency is reporting an incident as an attempted 
suicide when an individual notifies transit personnel that they are 
having suicidal thoughts and medical personnel are called to assist the 
individual. The majority of reporters, however, are not reporting this 
type of incident to the NTD as an attempted suicide. This difference in 
understanding leads to discrepancies in the data reported to the NTD.
    To address these differing interpretations, FTA proposes the 
following definition of attempted suicide: Self-inflicted harm where 
death does not occur, but the intention of the person was to cause a 
fatal outcome. The attempt and intent must be accounted for by a third 
party in the form of police reports, security personnel reports, or 
other eyewitness statements.
    The FTA further proposes including the following reporting note to 
the 2019 Safety and Security reporting manual to clarify the proposed 
definition: If there was no documented suicide attempt and the 
individual was transported only for a mental health evaluation, the 
event is to be reported on the Non-Major Monthly Summary report.
b. Modify Data Collection on Vehicles Involved in Reportable Safety 
Events
    The NTD currently captures detailed reports for major safety 
events--events that meet one or more of FTA's major reporting 
thresholds. Data collected include information about the impacts of the 
event (injuries, fatalities, damages), the conditions at the time of 
the event, and the specifics of the vehicles involved (speed, action, 
manufacturer).
    The NTD also captures detailed asset data for each agency's vehicle 
fleets through the annual reporting process. These fleet records 
include details on vehicle length, fuel type, age, manufacturer, and 
more.
    Although both streams of data are available in the NTD, these two 
data sets (major safety events and vehicle fleets) are not currently 
linked in the system. This means that a data user cannot identify the 
vehicle fleet information for a vehicle involved in a major safety 
event.
    The current data structure limits FTA's and the industry's ability 
to identify safety concerns, assess risk, and develop and monitor 
mitigations. To improve the usability of the NTD data, FTA proposes 
modifying the NTD's safety event forms to require reporters to identify 
the vehicle fleet information from their annual report through a menu 
of their active fleets.
    FTA anticipates that this change will reduce reporting burden. By 
linking the existing vehicle inventory to the safety forms, agencies 
will no longer have to enter redundant information on a vehicle 
involved in a safety event. They will now be able to select the fleet 
from a drop-down menu and all data will be autopopulated from their 
inventory to the safety form. This change would be applicable to all 
major events involving a revenue vehicle.
c. Add Information on Drug and Alcohol Post-Accident Testing
    The NTD does not currently capture information on whether a major 
incident required drug and alcohol post-accident testing per 49 CFR 
655.44--Post-accident testing. It would be useful for both the FTA and/
or State Safety Oversight Agencies to track this information at the 
incident level to support accident investigations and evaluate agency 
compliance with this requirement.
    The FTA proposes including the following questions to all NTD major 
event reporting: (1) Was FTA Drug and Alcohol Post-Accident Testing 
required? If agencies answer yes to the first question, they will be 
prompted to answer the second question: (2) Was FTA Drug and Alcohol 
Post-Accident Testing completed? Agencies would provide answers to each 
question via a yes/no check box.
    The estimated burden to report this information to the NTD is 
minimal as agencies already have obligations regarding documenting 
post-accident testing and providing records to FTA upon request.

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H. Clarification on Reporting a Temporary Bus Bridge Service 
Information

    The FTA has received a request to clarify when mode-level service 
is reportable for a temporary bus bridge. Several agencies have 
expressed a concern that the cost of tracking the detailed information 
necessary to report a temporary bus bridge as a new mode to the NTD 
outweighs the benefits of the potential funds generated through the FTA 
formula apportionment programs from these temporary services.
    The FTA proposes the following clarification: In cases where a 
temporary bus bridge, using a new mode or type of service, is put into 
place in response to a capital project or emergency repair, the 
reporting agency is not required to create a new mode in the NTD 
reporting system to report service and financial information to NTD. In 
these cases, the cost of the service should be reported in the 
appropriate operating cost functions (if due to an emergency situation) 
or capital costs functions (if due to a capital project).
    If grantees would like to receive credit for the service provided 
by a temporary bus bridge using a new mode in the FTA formula 
apportionment programs, the grantee may opt to create a new mode in the 
NTD. Service provided via a bus bridge for a rail mode is not 
reportable to the NTD under the rail mode. Reporters may not include 
the vehicle revenue miles, vehicle revenue hours, unlinked passenger 
trips, and passenger miles from the temporary bus bridge in their 
reported rail mode. They must create a new mode to report this service 
to the NTD.
    Agencies implementing a temporary bus bridge through an existing 
mode (i.e., a mode they currently report to the NTD) should report the 
temporary bus bridge cost and service information to the NTD as part of 
their existing mode reporting.

I. Clarification of Incidental Use for Transit Asset Reporting

    The FTA has begun collecting additional information on transit 
assets in report year 2018. Current guidance for reporting inventory 
and condition information on administrative and maintenance facilities 
states that an agency must report detailed asset and condition 
information if they have capital replacement responsibility, with an 
exemption for facilities where the use by transit providers is 
considered incidental. An example of this type of arrangement would be 
a city department of transportation that uses a single office or small 
suite within a large city hall building or a county-owned maintenance 
facility that services a large number of county maintenance vehicles 
including a very small number of vehicles used for transit. In these 
instances, FTA would consider the transit provider's use of the 
facility to be incidental and would not require reporting of inventory 
or condition information to the NTD.
    NTD reporters have asked for a clarification of the term incidental 
use for the purposes of reporting. The FTA seeks comment on its 
proposal to clarify that incidental use applies when 50 percent or less 
of the facility's physical space is dedicated to the provision of 
public transportation service.

J. Allow for Separate Mode Reporting for Geographically and Resource 
Separated Modes

    In a few cases, a transit agency may run two geographically and/or 
resource separated services that share the same mode. For example, an 
agency might run two light rail systems that are physically located on 
opposite sides of the state and have a separate vehicle fleet and 
workforce. Under current NTD reporting guidance, these services would 
be reported as a single mode if they are run by a single agency. Thus, 
despite the fact that they are geographically separated and do not 
share resources, their financial and service data is captured in the 
NTD in a single mode.
    The intent of collecting NTD data by mode and type of service is to 
provide a clear presentation of the resources necessary to run a single 
mode of service. The current data structure obscures this presentation 
for systems that run two geographically and resource separated 
services. Combining this information in the data set reduces the 
usability of the data for stakeholders.
    The FTA proposes requiring agencies with geographically or resource 
separated modes of service to report them as two separate modes in the 
NTD. Under this requirement, agencies would report the financial, 
service, and asset information separately to the NTD rather than 
combining the information to report as a single mode. The FTA 
anticipates that the additional reporting burden of this proposal would 
be small, as FTA is only aware of one case where two resource-separated 
services are not already being reported separately. Reporters currently 
maintain separate internal records for resource-separated services, so 
this proposal would allow grantees to report to the NTD in a way that 
more closely matches their internal records.

K. Clarification on Commuter Service Survey Standards

    Current FTA policy requires an agency to provide a passenger survey 
of new commuter service to the NTD to establish that it meets the 
criteria for reportable commuter rail, bus, or ferry service. The FTA 
considers service to be commuter service if at least 50 percent of 
passengers make a return trip on the same day across all service runs 
for one year. The FTA proposes to update this policy so that the survey 
must meet the following criteria:
    1. The agency must conduct the survey over a 12-month period, to 
account for seasonal variations in passenger behavior.
    2. The agency must include the entire length of each route in the 
survey, including all times of day, and all days of the year.
    3. If sampling by passengers, each passenger for the entire year 
must be given an equal chance of selection. If sampling by vehicle 
operations, each vehicle operation for the entire year must be given an 
equal chance of selection, weighted by the anticipated passenger count 
on each vehicle. If any other strata are used in the sample design, 
each strata must meet FTA's requirements.
    4. For the purpose of calculating return trips, a passenger making 
a single round trip in a given day cannot be surveyed twice for 
inclusion in the final calculation. The calculation establishing 
whether 50 percent of riders make a same-day round trip must be 
calculated as: (total unique passengers making same-day return trip)/
((total unique passengers making same-day return trip) + (total unique 
passengers making an overnight trip)).
    5. A person may be counted as making a same-day return trip if the 
person makes one leg of the trip by another means of transportation.
    6. The survey must determine that at least 50 percent of passengers 
on each route make a return trip on the same day, with 95 percent 
confidence.
    7. A qualified statistician must approve the survey methodology, 
the sample size, and the sampling methodology and certify that the 
results give the required level of confidence.
    If at least 50 percent of all passengers surveyed on a route made a 
return trip on the same day, or reported their intention to do so, then 
FTA will permit the agency to report that route to the NTD as a 
commuter service.
    Eligible commuter service is fully attributable to an urbanized 
area if at least 50 percent of passengers are making a return trip on 
the same day.

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If the service does not meet this threshold, it would be considered 
intercity service. On intercity ferry and rail services that meet the 
definition of public transportation, all portions of the service 
located outside the boundaries of the urbanized area would be 
attributable at a rate of 27 percent per 49 U.S.C. 5336.

L. Clarification on Reporting Linear Miles and Track Miles to the Asset 
Inventory

    The guidance published with the final reporting requirements for 
guideway infrastructure did not clearly state definitions and reporting 
requirements for linear miles and track miles. The FTA proposes the 
following definitions of linear miles and track miles as referenced in 
the NTD Policy Manual. Linear miles is defined as ``the length in miles 
of the route path of track--regardless of multiple track railways over 
the same area'' and track miles is defined as the ``cumulative length 
in miles of all track--including multiple track railways over the same 
area. This should represent the total length of all laid track.''
    Earlier guidance appeared to imply that agencies must report both 
linear miles and track miles for guideway infrastructure. The FTA 
proposes to clarify that agencies may report either linear miles, or 
track miles, or both for the purposes of asset condition and 
performance reporting of guideway infrastructure to the NTD.

M. Clarification on Rural Financial Data Reporting Requirement

    The updated Uniform System of Accounts (USOA), effective beginning 
Fiscal Year 2018, states that to report the total costs of delivering 
each mode of transit service, transit agencies must calculate both 
direct and shared costs of providing service. Agencies may continue to 
allocate shared costs based on approved cost allocation methods. This 
is consistent with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
    The FTA clarifies that recipients of Rural Area Formula Program (49 
U.S.C. 5311) funding must report operating expenses and fare revenues 
by mode and type of service. State DOT recipients must report this data 
for each Section 5311 subrecipient beginning in Fiscal Year 2019.

    Issued in Washington, DC.
K. Jane Williams,
Acting Administrator.
[FR Doc. 2019-06943 Filed 4-8-19; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 4910-57-P