Public Comments on DOT Regulatory Review Notice

Yesterday the public comment period on the DOT Regulatory Review notice ended. Only 21 comments were submitted. It was a short comment period (30-days) because of requirements of one of the Executive Orders that the notice was supporting, that may explain the relatively low corporate turnout. What was amazing was that there were absolutely no letter writing campaigns associated with the Notice.

Comment Review

Of the 21 comments submitted there were only two addressing topics that I generally cover here in this blog. My comment on the FAA’s failure to write congressionally mandated regulations allowing critical infrastructure to request ‘no UAS fly zone’ designation and one cybersecurity comment from an anonymous commentor.

The cybersecurity related comment was part of a recommendation to do away with the Electronic Log Devices (ELDs) that FMCSA is requiring for truckers. Anonymous, quoting a number of cybersecurity publications, points out that the Omnitracs (a major ELD supplier) device has known cybersecurity vulnerabilities that might allow a sophisticated attacker to gain access to other systems on the trucks on which the ELD is installed. This, anonymous explains, makes the truck subject to cyber attack and potential hijacking. The commentor’s solution, get rid of the ELD’s.

Actually there are a couple of other commentors that also want to achieve the same end, but none of them mentioned cybersecurity as a reason.

What Is Missing

Given the level of opposition to the Trump Administration’s (PHMSA) rulemaking on LNG by rail, I expected to see a similar campaign supporting the Biden Administration’s consideration of revoking that rule. Biden specifically directed DOT to look at the LNG by rail rulemaking, it was mentioned in the Notice, and there were no comments submitted that addressed the issue.

One of the reasons may be that this is turning out to be a non-issue. Not because people are not concerned about the potential dangers, but because no one is taking advantage of the rule. The reason for that is the non-existence of the new DOT-113C120W9 required by the PHMSA rule. An article over at DelawareCurrents.org has an interesting discussion about why no one is making these new railcars.

I suspect that PHMSA will get around to removing the authorization for LNG shipment by rail. But it will be deliberatively done in such a way to make it more difficult to reinstitute such a rule in the future. There is no time pressure on DOT or PHMSA to get this accomplished, the lack of railcars has given them the time necessary to accomplish this.