Department of Transportation May 2, 2012 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), this notice announces that the Information Collection Request (ICR) abstracted below has been forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and comment. The ICR describes the nature of the information collections and their expected burden. The Federal Register Notice with a 60-day comment period was published on February 9, 2012 [77 FR 6688]. This is a request for an extension of an existing collection.

The Surface Transportation Board (Board or STB) is changing, clarifying, and updating some of its existing regulations and procedures regarding the use of railroad rights-of-way (ROW) for rail banking and interim trail use under the National Trails System Act (Trails Act). New rules are adopted that require the parties jointly to notify the Board when an interim trail use/rail banking agreement has been reached. The new rules also require parties to ask the Board to vacate a trail condition and issue a replacement trail condition covering the portion of right-of-way subject to the trail use agreement if their trail use agreement covers only part of the right-of-way. In addition, the final rules clarify that a new party who assumes responsibility for a recreational trail must acknowledge that the interim trail use is subject to future reactivation of the railroad line.