“When it comes to innovation, when it comes to testing, we want to be there with you as a partner, not as a punitive, prescriptive agency that is going to tell you how to run your operations,” said FRA Acting Administrator Drew Feeley at Railway Interchange 2025. This was among the key takeaways from his Railway Supply Institute (RSI)-sponsored “fireside chat” with Emily Kimball, Partner-Global Regulatory at Hogan Lovells, on May 22.
Feeley stressed to attendees that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) wants to work with railroads and “get out of the way” when it comes to implementing new technology—as long as it’s used safely.
Feeley previously served as Staff Director for the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials under Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Chairman. He has also served as Senior Counsel at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and as Policy Counsel in the Office of Policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he focused on environmental permitting policy. Earlier in his career, Feeley held counsel positions at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Prior to coming to Washington, D.C., he was an attorney in private practice in Birmingham, Ala.
If POTUS 47-nominee David Fink is confirmed by the Senate to serve as the next FRA Administrator, Feeley will become Deputy Administrator.
“FRA, and the USDOT in general, we are returning the agency to its original mission,” Feeley told Railway Interchange attendees when Emily Kimball asked about the FRA’s priorities for the next four years. “FRA is a safety agency; it’s a development agency; it’s a research agency. We’re going to focus on getting the grants out, obligating them quicker. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re going to focus on permit streamlining … We’re going to focus on deregulation. The President has an Executive Order [that there will be] 10 deregulation actions for every one regulation [enacted]. We have a regulation reform task force that meets almost weekly, where we look at outdated, burdensome, duplicative regulations, and figure out how to get rid of them.”
The goal now, he said, is “returning the agency to its core mission. We felt like in the previous Administration, there was a little bit of mission creep. We’re not an environmental agency; there’s EPA. We don’t do justice stuff; there’s the Department of Justice. We do building, we do safety, and that’s, I think, the biggest change.”
When Emily Kimball asked Feeley what areas FRA will focus on in terms of deregulation, he said, “Everything.”
“Really, we’re looking at every regulation,” he told her. Through a recent Request for Information on deregulation ideas, “we got hundreds if not thousands of different submissions,” Feeley noted. While he said the department is “actively” working on 10, he did not name them.
“Stuff is just completely outdated,” Feeley reported. “There’s prescriptive stuff that is on the books right now, as recently as just the last couple of years, that we’re looking at rolling back. So, the effort has just begun, but we want to move quickly, and obviously we look to you all [in the railroad industry] for any suggestions on stuff that you think we should do. Removing red tape is a big deal for us.”
Emily Kimball pointed out that the Association of American Railroads “has been pretty outspoken on the [FRA’s] two-person crew rule,” and asked where that might fit into regulatory reform. (AAR, in a consolidated challenge, seeks to vacate FRA’s rule.)
“It’s in litigation right now,” Feeley said. “I think oral arguments are June 3 in Miami. We’re going to see the litigation through; see what the courts say.” He noted that if the court “orders us to redo it and relook at it, we’re going to have to do that. But if they say the rule is fine, that doesn’t necessarily close the door.”
Kimball also asked if there will be “any shift in practices or focus” in terms of enforcement at FRA. “We are going to focus on safety,” Feeley told her. “Safety violations, and enforcing safety is literally the heart of what FRA does. So, are we going to overly burden or get in the way and penalize, be overly punitive? No, but when it comes to enforcement, we’re going to stick to our mission. We’re not here to be your police … We are going to be fair and follow the law.”
Feeley made clear FRA’s view on innovation and technology: “We want to promote it to the fullest extent,” he told Kimball and Railway Interchange attendees. “We feel like the previous Administration was not so forthright when it came to automatic track inspection and some of the new [technology] that’s out there. You know, promoting drones for safety; sensors; things of that nature. Granting waivers to test new technology is something that we wholeheartedly support, because it goes toward the mission.” He noted that “for decades, we kept granting waivers to test automatic inspection technology, and then the last Administration, they started denying [it] for unprecedented reasoning … I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of roadblocks to new technology with us.”
Kimball asked Feeley for his take on telematics in the rail industry and in what ways FRA could support its use. “Honestly, it’s just [us] getting out of the way, you know?” he said. “Again, we are returning to our mission [of safety], but at the same time allowing the industry to do what it does. We don’t want to be prescriptive. We want to follow your lead and give you what you need.”
Kimball also asked Feeley if there are technologies he sees as “having the potential to have a big impact on safety, or that you’re excited about?”
“We don’t want to just say there’s one technology that we’re going to support, because folks come in all the time with different ideas,” he pointed out.
Additionally, Kimball requested Feeley’s thoughts on Genesee & Wyoming’s partnership with Parallel Systems to test autonomous battery-electric freight car technology.
“We need to follow your lead and encourage you all to innovate and not get in the way, not deny waivers, not direct you to things that we think you should do,” Feeley said. “Just let the industry flourish. And again, we’re just here to make sure you’re doing in a safe way.”
What is FRA’s approach to alternative fuel locomotives? “Whatever works,” Feeley told Kimball. “Whether it’s diesel, hydrogen, electric. We had a hearing when I was on the Hill on the CARB rule in California. We thought that was incredibly unfair, especially to the short lines. Again, we’re not going to dictate what the industry should do, what they should use, what kind of locomotives they should have. If you want diesel, we will support that. If it’s battery or electric, hydrogen—whatever moves the industry.”
With surface transportation reauthorization coming up in September, Kimball asked Feeley, given his background, what FRA is looking to get out of that bill.
“First off, there’s not going to be, I don’t think, any advanced funding,” Feeley said. “My former boss, Chairman Graves, was not a fan of that … I think they’re going to plus up some of the grant programs like CRISI, grade crossing elimination, which has ample benefits. Obviously, we’re going to deemphasize funding for terrible projects like California High-Speed Rail … We’re going to try to look at maybe obligating grants faster, getting them out, streamlining in that respect.” Feeley also touched on the Corridor ID program, which he called “super important,” but noted that “there has to be demand; there has to be a need. If you’re going to put an Amtrak train on a freight network, they need to be working together, and it needs to have a purpose—not just putting it out there. And we feel like some of that was lost with previous Administration, and frankly, the previous CEO [of Amtrak].”
In sum, Feeley said: “Come tell us what we can do [to work with you], because we want to help you … We’re not policing you. We’re not punishing you. That’s not what the mission of this Administration is. We want to build.”
