Federal Railroad Administration December 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces that the renewal Information Collection Requests (ICRs) abstracted below arebeing forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and comment. The ICRs describes the nature of the information collection and its expected burden. The Federal Register notice with a 60-day comment period soliciting comments on the following collection of information was published on October 17, 2014 (79 FR 62513).

This notice of determination provides the FRA Administrator's minimum annual random drug and alcohol testing rates for calendar year 2015. According to data from FRA's Management Information System, the rail industry's random drug testing positive rate has remained below 1.0 percent for the last two years. FRA's Administrator has therefore determined that the minimum annual random drug testing rate for the period January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2015, will remain at 25 percent of covered railroad employees. In addition, because the industry-wide 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, 2015 through December 31, 2015. Railroads remain free, as always, to conduct random testing at higher rates.

FRA is issuing this notice to advise the public that it intends to grant the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) and California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) waivers from FRA's Buy America requirement for the non-domestic final assembly of up to four (two for Amtrak; two for the Authority) ``prototype'' Tier III high-speed rail (HSR) trainsets in connection with the procurement of HSR trainsets. These waivers apply only to the final assembly of up to two prototype HSR trainsets each for Amtrak and the Authority. Each waiver is subject to the following condition: Before issuing a ``Notice To Proceed'' to any selected supplier, Amtrak and the Authority each must certify and provide support to FRA that its selected supplier still has not established domestic manufacturing facilities capable of assembling the prototypes and delivering them within a reasonable time. All components used in the prototypes must still be domestically manufactured or separate waivers for components requested and granted before assembly of the prototypes can commence.