OMB Approves STB Emergency ICR for Urgent Rail Service Issues

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved an emergency information collection request (ICR) from the Surface Transportation Board (STB) for “Urgent Rail Service Issues”. The 30-day ICR notice was published on June 17^th, 2022. The ICR is approved through January 31^st, 2023; the STB will have to go through the normal publish-comment cycle to renew the ICR past that date.

Sharp eyed readers will probably recall that the OMB previously announced that this emergency ICR had been withdrawn. It now appears that the unexplained withdrawal was due to problems with the supporting document submitted to OIRA. The earlier version of that document did not include any mention of the April STB hearings that specifically led to the STBs order to produce the information covered in the ICR. The version used to support the approved ICR contains a brief discussion of that hearing in the opening section of the document.

STB Withdraws Urgent Rail Issues Emergency ICR

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs announced that the Surface Transportation Board had withdrawn its emergency request for the approval of an information collection request (ICR) for “Urgent Rail Service Issues”. There is no indication on the OIRA site as to why the request was withdrawn, nor is their any mention of the withdrawal on the EP 770 docket on the STB web site.

Technically, the STB would have to have an approved ICR to be able to require the data submissions from the four Class I railroads for the reporting requirements ordered on May 6^th, 2022 and the subsequent order that was issued by the STB on June 13^th, 2022. Since the railroads have already submitted the preliminary and revised data required by the two STB orders the issue may be moot. It is still unusual to have emergency ICRs like this withdrawn.