Department of Transportation January 14, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This action reopens the comment period for an NPRM that was published on October 26, 2012. In that document, the FAA proposed to modify the Las Vegas, NV, Class B airspace area to ensure the containment of large turbine-powered aircraft within Class B airspace.

FRA announces that it has revised its Procedures for Considering Environmental Impacts to add seven new additions to the list of categorical exclusions (CE). Categorical exclusions are actions that FRA has determined do not individually or cumulatively have significant effects on the human environment and thus, do not require the preparation of an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). To consolidate the location of all of FRA's CEs, this notice reproduces all 20 original CEs and adds the seven new CEs starting with number 21.

The FAA is correcting an airworthiness directive (AD) that published in the Federal Register. That AD applies to Lycoming Engines TSIO-540-AK1A, and Continental Motors, Inc. TSIO-360-MB, TSIO-360-SB, and TSIO-360-RB reciprocating engines, with certain Hartzell Engine Technologies (HET) turbochargers, model TA0411, part number 466642- 0001; 466642-0002; 466642-0006; 466642-9001; 466642-9002; or 466642- 9006, or with certain HET model TA0411 turbochargers overhauled or repaired since August 29, 2012. The Summary paragraph and the Applicability paragraph list an incorrect engine model for Lycoming Engines. This document corrects those errors. In all other respects, the original document remains the same.

Under 49 U.S.C. 10502, the Board is granting a petition for exemption from the prior approval requirements of 49 U.S.C. 11323-25 for BNSF Railway Company (BNSF) to lease from Norfolk Southern Railway Company approximately 1.2 miles of rail line (the Line) located between W. 23 Street on the northern end and a point approximately 600 feet north of the Chicago SAG Canal on the southern end in Chicago, Ill. Under the lease, BNSF proposes to rehabilitate the currently inoperable Line to provide a new connection between major freight yards and main line tracks, thereby reducing congestion and delays and adding capacity to the Chicago area freight rail infrastructure. The lease exemption is subject to standard labor protective conditions.

As required by the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PSEA) of 2010 this rule proposes to establish a Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) setting minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles. This new standard would require hybrid and electric passenger cars, light trucks and vans (LTVs), medium and heavy duty, trucks, and buses, low speed vehicles (LSVs), and motorcycles to produce sounds meeting the requirements of this standard. This proposed standard applies to electric vehicles (EVs) and to those hybrid vehicles (HVs) that are capable of propulsion in any forward or reverse gear without the vehicle's internal combustion engine (ICE) operating. This standard would ensure that blind, visually-impaired, and other pedestrians are able to detect and recognize nearby hybrid and electric vehicles, as required by the PSEA, by requiring that hybrid and electric vehicles emit sound that pedestrians would be able to hear in a range of ambient environments and contain acoustic signal content that pedestrians will recognize as being emitted from a vehicle. The benefit of reducing the pedestrian injury rate per registered vehicle of HVs to ICE vehicles when 4.1% of the fleet is HV and EV would be 2790 fewer pedestrian and pedalcyclist injuries. We also estimate that this proposal will result in 10 fewer pedestrian and pedalcyclist injuries caused by LSVs. Thus, 2800 total injured pedestrians are expected to be avoided due to this proposal representing 35 equivalent lives saved. We do not estimate any quantifiable benefits for EVs because it is our view that EV manufacturers would have installed alert sounds in their cars without passage of the PSEA and this proposed rule. Comparison of costs and benefits expected due to this rule provides a cost of $0.83 to $0.99 million per equivalent life saved across the 3 and 7 percent discount levels for the light EV and HV and LSV fleet. According to our present model, a countermeasure that allows a vehicle to meet the proposed minimum sound requirements would be cost effective compared to our comprehensive cost estimate of the value of a statistical life of $6.3 million.