FRA Announces Final Rule for Securement of Unattended Equipment

Yesterday the DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration announced that it had submitted their final rule for the securement of unattended equipment to the Federal Register for publication. The announcement also included a link to download a copy [.PDF download] of the rule submitted to the FR. This rule will supersede and modify the provisions of FRA Emergency Order #28 issued after the Lac-Megantic Railroad disaster.

I will not be doing a detailed review of this rule today since the copy available is not the ‘official’ copy of the rule. This means that I cannot provide links to specific portions of the rule in my discussion nor will I be able to give specific dates for the bills effective and compliance dates. It is not currently scheduled to be published in tomorrow’s FR, so I expect that it will be published sometime next week.

The notice of proposed rulemaking was published for this rule in September of last year. Nine public comments were submitted in response to the NPMR.

NOTE: This final rule was not submitted to OMB for review, neither was the NPRM.