In an Oct. 28 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM; download below), the FRA said it has found, through oversight and continued industry engagement, that “existing PTC regulations do not adequately address temporary situations during which PTC technology is not enabled, including after certain initialization failures or in cases where a PTC system needs to be temporarily disabled to facilitate repair, maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, or capital projects.” It noted that it “expects PTC systems to be reliable and robust, further reducing the occurrence of initialization failures and outages.” The NPRM, it explained, “proposes to establish strict parameters and operating restrictions under which railroads may continue to operate safely in certain necessary scenarios when PTC technology is temporarily not governing rail operations.” Comments were due Jan. 11, 2025.
In their comments (download below), AAR and ASLRRA said they support a rulemaking that would offer relief for operating under unplanned system outages. “However, the associations oppose some changes considered unduly burdensome, such as requiring railroads to limit operations to restricted speeds after 24 hours of an unplanned PTC outage,” the ASLRRA pointed out in the Jan. 15 edition of its weekly Views & News email newsletter. “The associations also ask the agency to modify the scope of some changes and revise and clarify others.”
