[Federal Register Volume 60, Number 228 (Tuesday, November 28, 1995)]
[Notices]
[Pages 58718-58720]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 95-29132]



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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Office of the Secretary
[Docket No. OST-95-859]


Grade Crossing Safety Task Force

AGENCY: Office of the Secretary, DOT.

ACTION: Request for comments.

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SUMMARY: The Department of Transportation (USDOT) seeks to broaden the 
knowledge of the safety implications of the decisionmaking and 
coordination processes associated with the planning, design, 
construction, maintenance, operation, and inspection of highway-rail 
grade crossings. To do this, the Department has formed a USDOT Grade 
Crossing Safety Task Force. In addition, the Department intends to:

--Form a ``Blue Ribbon'' Working Group to support the task Force,
--Hold public meetings to provide input to the Task Force, and
--Prepare and publish a report documenting the findings of the Task 
Force.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before January 15, 1996, to be 
fully considered by the Department's Grade Crossing Safety Task Force.

ADDRESSES: Three copies of comments for the public docket on the Grade 
Crossing Safety task Force should be sent to: Office of the Secretary, 
Documentary Services Division, C-55, Attn: Grade Crossing Safety Task 
Force Public Docket No. OST-95-859, Room PL 401, 400 Seventh Street, 
S.W., Washington, D.C. 20590.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Transportation Secretary Federico Pena 
recently announced that he has directed the formation of a Grade 
Crossing Safety task Force within the DOT to conduct a comprehensive 
national review of safety measures relating to highway-rail grade 
crossing planning, design, construction, maintenance, operation, and 
inspection.
    Secretary Pena took this action in the aftermath of the tragic 
accident in Illinois involving a commuter train and school bus at a 
railroad crossing last October 25. The Secretary ordered the Department 
of Transportation to build upon its June 1994 Rail-Highway Crossing 
Safety Action Plan by forming a Task Force to conduct a comprehensive 
national review of the design, construction, and operation of highway-
rail grade crossings.
    The Secretary has directed the Task Force to report back to him by 
March 1, 1996, with its evaluation of the decisionmaking process 
related to the Nation's grade crossings, as well as recommendations for 
improvement. The Task Force will work with State, local, and private 
sector transportation officials to review existing standards and will 
develop a summary of national needs focusing on coordinated 
decisionmaking, inspection, and approval processes for highway-rail 
grade crossings.
    The Task Force includes representatives from four agencies within 
the U.S. Department of Transportation: The Federal Railroad 
Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the National 
Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Transit 
Administration. The Task Force is headed by Michael P. Huerta, 
Associate Deputy Transportation Secretary and Director of the Office of 
Intermodalism.
    In addition to the Task Force activities, both the Federal Railroad 
Administration and the Federal Highway Administration will work with 
the States as they respond to the National Transportation Safety 
Board's recommendation that States conduct an assessment of physical 
characteristics and traffic associated with crossings having 
interconnected highway and rail signals, and their systems design.
    To support the Task Force, the Department will also form a ``Blue 
Ribbon'' Working Group of approximately 20 people who can provide 
specialized information that will assist the Task Force in its work. 
This Working Group will reflect the diverse public and private sector 
entities involved in the processes which create or alter infrastructure 
at or near highway-rail grade crossings in order to create an expanded 
knowledge base for the Task Force. The participants for the Working 
Group will be selected on December 4 and the first meeting of the 
Working Group is currently scheduled for December 14.
    To provide additional input to the Task Force during its work, the 
Department intends to hold three public meetings in the coming weeks. 
The prospective sites of these public meetings are Raleigh, NC, 
Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA. The dates, times, and specific 
locations of these public meetings have not been determined, but will 
be announced in future press releases and/or Federal Register notices. 
Persons desiring more details on these meetings also can receive direct 
notification by addressing their requests to the individual identified 
at the end of this Federal Register notice under the section below 
entitled For Further Information Contact.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Questions on the Grade Crossing Safety 
Task Force and its public meetings can also be directed to the 
Secretary of Transportation's Office of Intermodalism which has been 
designated as the lead for the Grade Crossing Safety Task Force. 
Questions can be mailed, faxed, or transmitted on the Internet to:
Ms. Susan Ducan, Office of Intermodalism, Room 10126, 400 Seventh 
Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20590, Ph: (202) 366-8015, Fax: (202) 
366-8999, Internet: http://www.dot.gov/dotinfo/gen/xingtf.

[[Page 58719]]

    Comments by all parties on these highway-rail crossing issues are 
welcome.
    To give the public a better sense of the scope of this USDOT 
initiative, the Grade Crossing Safety Task Force Charter is presented 
in the paragraphs below.

Charter of the Grade Crossing Safety Task Force

    Mission and Purpose: The Department recognizes its role to ensure 
safe transportation and to develop a ``seamless'' national intermodal 
transportation system. In June 1994, Secretary of Transportation 
Federico Pena released a DOT Rail-Highway Crossing Safety Action Plan 
that presented a multi-faceted, multi-modal approach for improving 
safety at our Nation's highway-rail crossings. The 55 individual 
proposals taken together represent a comprehensive Departmental effort 
that has elevated highway-rail crossing safety across the Modal 
Administrations to deal with this important issue.
    The Department's Grade Crossing Safety Task Force, designed to 
complement the ongoing work of the Action Plan and to further the 
Department's goals, will address issues beyond the scope of the Action 
Plan. Through the Grade Crossing Safety Task Force, the Department will 
investigate and assess the decisionmaking and coordination processes, 
and safety aspects pertaining to the planning, design, construction, 
maintenance, operation, and inspection of highway-rail grade crossings. 
Following this assessment, the Task Force will develop recommendations 
and submit them to the Secretary.
    Participants: From the Department of Transportation, the Federal 
Railroad Administration (FRA), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), 
Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and the National Highway Traffic 
Safety Administration (NHTSA) will be members of the Task Force. The 
Associate Deputy Secretary of Transportation will serve as its 
Chairman. Each member agency will select one representative and one 
alternate to serve as delegates to the Task Force on grade crossing 
issues. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent 
Federal agency, also will participate as a Task Force member. 
Representative will attend regular meetings and participate in 
necessary assignments. A ``Blue Ribbon'' Working Group consisting of 
people with expertise in the use or design of railroad grade crossings 
will be established to assist the Task Force by providing additional 
information.
    Key Issues: The accidents and deaths at highway-rail grade 
crossings continue to be a problem nationwide. The Rail-Highway 
Crossing Safety Action Plan addresses some aspects of these issues, 
however, questions remain concerning the level of planning coordination 
and review of safety considerations associated with grade crossings. 
The Task Force will examine these questions as they relate to five 
potential problem areas:
    1. Interconnected (Pre-empted) signals. Highway traffic signals 
along roadways in close proximity to rail crossings which are triggered 
by oncoming trains.
    2. Storage. The roadway space allotted for vehicles stopped between 
a road intersection and nearby railroad tracks.
    3. High-profile crossings. Junctions at which railroad tracks are 
elevated above the crossing roadway surface, thus requiring vehicular 
traffic to pass over a ``hump'' and exposing the vehicles to the risk 
of getting ``hung-up'' on the tracks.
    4. Light rail transit crossings. This most prevalent type of newly 
constructed highway-rail grade crossing also lacks standards for 
crossing design, warning devices, and traffic control measures.
    5. Inclusion of grade crossing information in the permit process 
for slow, low, and other special vehicles including oversized and 
overweight vehicles whose route crosses a railroad right-of-way.
    The NTSB recently issued a Class I Urgent Recommendation requesting 
the States to identify all highway/railroad grade crossings where 
control of a highway traffic signal is preempted by train movements and 
to take corrective action where sufficient time is not provided to 
clear vehicles stopped on the tracks before the train arrives at the 
crossing. As a result, an inventory of highway-rail crossings which 
have interconnected signals will be compiled by the FRA using input 
from the NTSB, the States and the railroads.
    Technology shows promise for enhancing safety in these areas. 
However, technology alone will not solve the problem. Therefore, the 
focus of the Task Force will not be on the various technologies which 
could serve as solutions to prevent accidents at the highway-rail 
crossings. Rather, the Task Force will concentrate on the 
decisionmaking processes which result in the construction and 
maintenance of the grade crossing infrastructure. In order to 
accomplish this, the Task Force will specifically address the 
following:

    1. Federal, State, local, and industry standards, criteria and 
guidelines governing the planning, design, construction, 
maintenance, operation and use of highway-rail grade crossings and 
the effectiveness of these regulations and standards.
    2. Planning, design, construction, maintenance, operation, and 
inspection decisionmaking processes for grade crossings.
    3. The construction and reconstruction/alteration approval and 
periodic review processes, including coordination among the various 
levels of government and with the private sector.
    4. The decisionmaking and procedural processes for defining 
acceptable crossing design and warning device design.

    Task Force Activities: The Task Force will hold regularly scheduled 
meetings. In order to keep a timely work flow and to meet any schedules 
and deadlines, ad hoc meetings may be called to address issued and 
problems that need immediate discussion and resolution.
    To determine where decisionmaking and coordination can be improved, 
the Task Force will review technical reports on planning, engineering, 
operations, maintenance, and inspection practices associated with 
highway-rail crossings. The objective of this Task Force effort is not 
to summarize the considerable body of literature that already exists on 
highway-rail crossing safety, but to identify gaps that might exist in 
standard-setting, system engineering and multidisciplinary reviews. The 
Task Force may create subgroups of Federal employees which would be 
asked to draft issue-specific working papers that can serve as the 
basis for the final report to the Secretary on March 1, 1996.
    The Task Force will be involved in outreach to the transportation 
community through:

    1. Publication of this Federal Register notice which outlines 
the Task Force activities and seeks written public comments and 
suggestions.
    2. Creation of a dedicated FAX number and Internet address to 
allow the general public to submit comments to the task force.
    3. Holding public meetings with State transportation officials, 
local community representatives, and others (such as the general 
public, industry groups, and safety organizations) to gain stake-
holder input on grade crossing issues. Three public outreach 
meetings will be scheduled nationwide at locations representative of 
the potential problem areas listed above.
    4. Create a ``Blue Ribbon'' Working Group comprised of diverse 
public and private sector entities that has relevant experience and 
expertise to provide specialized information that will assist the 
Task Force in its efforts to investigate and improve the safety of 
highway-rail grade crossings.

    Final Product and Timeframe: The Task Force will submit a report to 
the Secretary that gives an overview of the 

[[Page 58720]]
highway-rail grade crossing issues and problems along with any 
recommendations on how to solve any construction decision-making and 
safety problems that may be identified. The report must be submitted by 
March 1, 1996.

Issued this 22nd day of November, 1995, in Washington, D.C.
Michael P. Huerta,
Associate Deputy Secretary and Director, Office of Intermodalism.
[FR Doc. 95-29132 Filed 11-27-95; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910-62-P-M