Department of Transportation August 12, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On June 9, 2008, FRA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register (73 FR 32515) proposing amending the eligibility and application form and content criteria of the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) Program to ensure the long-term sustainability of the program, promote competition in the railroad industry, and reduce the risk of default for applicants and the Government. Due to an administrative error, a Preliminary Regulatory Evaluation (Evaluation) was not included in the docket. This notice announces an extension of the comment period until August 26, 2008 to allow for consideration of the Evaluation.

FMCSA announces receipt of applications from 23 individuals for exemptions from the vision requirement in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. If granted, the exemptions would enable these individuals to qualify as drivers of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) in interstate commerce without meeting the Federal vision standard.

We propose to adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all McDonnell Douglas airplanes identified above. This proposed AD would require repetitive inspections of the lower skin and stringers at stations Xw = 408 and Xw = -408 and corrective actions if necessary. This proposed AD results from reports of cracks in the skins and stringers at the end fasteners common to the stringer end fittings at station Xw = 408 and Xw = -408 wing splice joints. We are proposing this AD to detect and correct fatigue cracking in the skins and stringers at the end fasteners common to the stringer end fittings at a certain station and wing splice joints, which could result in wing structure that might not sustain limit load, and consequent loss of structural integrity of the wing.

This notice provides interested parties with the opportunity to comment on changes to the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) National Transit Database (NTD) policy on the reporting of coordinated human services transportation data. For many years, it has been FTA's policy to require transit agencies reporting demand response service to the NTD to exclude service data for certain sponsored trips from their reports. These trips were typically arranged and paid for by a third party for a specific group of clients (such as participants in programs like Medicaid, Head Start, sheltered workshops, or assisted living centers), and were often not open to the general public at large. Data for these trips were thus excluded from the calculation of the apportionment of Urbanized Area Formula Grants. In light of FTA's policies and guidance on Coordinated Human Services Transportation, FTA is proposing to clarify this policy for the 2008 NTD Report Year to specify that transit agencies are to report data for all of their demand response service as public transportation, except for those services that are defined as charter service under FTA's recently revised charter rule (49 CFR Part 604, 73 FR 2326, January 14, 2008). FTA also proposes to require transit agencies in urbanized areas to separately report their ``regular unlinked passenger trips'' and their ``sponsored demand response unlinked passenger trips'' for demand response service. FTA invites the public to comment on this proposed policy change.