FRA Requests Emergency Safety ICR

Today the Federal Railroad Administration published an emergency information collection request (ICR) in the Federal Register (78 FR 53818-53819) supporting their recent Emergency Order 28. The FRA is asking for OMB approval of the ICR by September 1^st for 180 days’ worth of information collections.

The ICR would cover the requirements from the Emergency Order to:

Develop a plan to identify specific locations and circumstances when HAZMAT trains or vehicles may be left unattended;

Communicate, record, and verify securement information about HAZMAT trains that are left unattended;

Review and revise procedures for determining the number of hand brakes that must be set on HAZMAT trains that are left unattended;

Implement procedures for discussing process for security HAZMAT trains that are to be left unattended; and

Establish procedures to ensure job briefings of all employees that will conduct train securement of HAZMAT trains to be left unattended.

These requirements were already set in place by Emergency Order #28, this ICR would provide administrative approval for FRA to require the developing and maintaining of the documentation demonstrating compliance with the requirements.

The FRA estimates that the 655 railroad covered by this order in the United States will have a total of over 23 million individual responses to these requirements over the next year for a total of over 1.9 million hours of regulatory burden. No estimate is made of how much this regulatory burden will cost the railroad industry. Neither does this emergency ICR address the additional burden associated with the joint safety advisory published on the same day and topic by the FRA and PHMSA.