Federal Railroad Administration 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and its implementing regulations, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) hereby announces that it is seeking an extension of the following currently approved information collection activities. These information collection activities received a six-month emergency approval from OMB. FRA seeks this extension while it works on developing a proposed rule related to the same topic of railroad operating rules. Before submitting these information collection requirements for clearance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), FRA is soliciting public comment on specific aspects of the activities identified below.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and its implementing regulations, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) hereby announces that it is seeking renewal of the following currently approved information collection activities. Before submitting these information collection requirements for clearance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), FRA is soliciting public comment on specific aspects of the activities identified below.

FRA is issuing Safety Advisory 2006-01, in order to provide the industry additional information on the potential catastrophic failure of certain railroad freight car side frame castings manufactured by National Castings of Mexico's (NCM) Sahagun, Mexico facility and Buckeye Steel Castings' (Buckeye) Columbus, Ohio facility. The purpose of this safety advisory is to recommend that the rail industry carefully inspect these specific side frames when equipped freight cars are in shops or on repair tracks.

In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), this notice announces that the Information Collection Requirements (ICRs) abstracted below have been forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and comment. The ICRs describes the nature of the information collections and their expected burdens. The Federal Register notice with a 60-day comment period soliciting comments on the following collections of information was published on December 20, 2005 (70 FR 75533).

The FRA is issuing this notice to advise the public of a revision to the Northern terminus of the project to be studied in the Tier-II Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Southeast High Speed Rail (SEHSR) Corridor in Virginia and North Carolina. The previous Notice of Intent issued on May 22, 2003 identified a Northern project terminus in Petersburg, Virginia at Collier Rail Yard. The EIS study area now extends from Main Street Station in Richmond, Virginia to Raleigh, North Carolina (Boylan Wye), forming a project corridor approximately 168 miles long.

FRA announces the next meeting of the RSAC, a Federal Advisory Committee that develops railroad safety regulations through a consensus process. The RSAC meeting topics include opening remarks from the FRA Administrator, an update on the National Rail Safety Action Plan, a discussion of track issues, hazardous material non-accident releases, a rail security update, and the Collision Analysis Study (concluding work previously undertaken by the Collision Analysis Working Group). Status reports will be given on the Passenger Safety, Railroad Operating Rules, and Roadway Worker Safety working groups. The report of the Railroad Operating Rules Working Group is expected to be its final report on preparation of a notice of proposed rulemaking to address three principal causes of human factor train accidents, and the Committee may be asked to vote on the recommendations contained in that report if available sufficiently in advance of the meeting. The Committee will be asked to vote to accept a task to review and revise the Railroad Locomotive Safety Standards, and FRA may offer a task regarding improvement of the Track Safety Standards (including resolution of issues raised in comments under the interim final rule on joint integrity in continuous welded rail).

Using data from Management Information System annual reports, FRA has determined that the 2004 rail industry random testing positive rate was 0.94 percent for drugs and 0.18 percent for alcohol. Since the industry-wide random drug testing positive rate has remained below 1.0 percent for the last two years, the Federal Railroad Administrator (Administrator) has determined that the minimum annual random drug testing rate for the period January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2006, will remain at 25 percent of covered railroad employees. Since the random alcohol testing violation rate has remained below 0.5 percent for the last two years, the Administrator has determined that the minimum random alcohol testing rate will remain at 10 percent of covered railroad employees for the period January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2006.