Agencies Issue Proposal on Rail Crossings 17 Years After Congress Ordered Rulemaking

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Feb. 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

Nearly 17 years after Congress ordered federal regulators to put in writing that motor vehicles are not to park on railroad tracks while waiting for the traffic to clear or a light to turn green, two agencies said they have rectified a series of “misunderstandings” with state transportation officials and have offered a new proposal.

The proposed rule, announced last month by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, would prohibit drivers of commercial motor vehicles from driving onto a rail grade crossing “without having sufficient space to drive completely through the crossing without stopping.”

Public comments are due by March 29. The agencies did not say when a final rule may be issued.



Congress ordered the rulemaking in 1994, and an initial rule was proposed in 1998. However, it never became law and, from 1998 to 2005, there were more than 26,000 crashes involving all types of vehicles at the nation’s 145,000 public, at grade, open highway-rail crossings.

So, why has it taken so long to turn a congressional mandate into a federal regulation that could save many lives?

FMCSA spokeswoman Candice Tolliver said in a statement that when the first rule was offered in 1998, FMCSA was under the Federal Highway Administration’s umbrella.

“FMCSA held a public meeting on the previous proposal, where concerns were raised about how it would impact the states,” Tolliver said. “The current NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] addresses these concerns as well as fulfills a statutory mandate for issuing the proposed rule.”

Other than that comment, FMCSA said it’s letting the 31-page rule and other backup documents speak for themselves. A PHMSA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, truckers said they continue to wrestle with conflicting state and local railroad crossing statutes, impatient and sometimes rude automobile motorists and dangerous crossing engineering that does not leave enough room for tractor-trailers to clear thousands of crossings without stopping on the tracks.

“This is an issue that has bedeviled the industry over time,” said Boyd Stephenson, manager of safety and security operations for American Trucking Associations.

“A lot of the time, a truck is trying to make it through the crossing, and all these cars are going around it, so that it’s almost impossible for the truck to make it through,” Stephenson said. “It puts the driver in a terrible situation, because they’ve got to do something unsafe.”

“But at the end of the day, it’s more of a common-sense issue than a regulatory issue,” Stephenson added. “Obviously, you shouldn’t leave a truck stationary on railroad tracks where a train might come by.”

FMCSA withdrew the 1998 proposal in 2006 because it had “created a great deal of misunderstanding and should be terminated,” according to the agency.

That misunderstanding was mostly with the states, which mistakenly thought the new regulation would require them to “reconstruct, rewire, reroute or otherwise correct every inadequate crossing,” FMCSA said.

So, government regulators went back to the drawing boards in 2006, vowing to open a new future rulemaking that would be “less burdened by previous misunderstandings.”

Stephenson said the ideal solution would be for federal officials to require that all crossings have sufficient space for a truck to clear the railroad tracks easily before it reaches a traffic light or stop sign.

FMCSA said that nearly 20,000 crossings have a clearance space for cars and trucks of less than 100 feet.

But with funding as an obvious stickler, an alternate solution might be for states or localities to offer truckers alternative routes to avoid the dangerous crossings outright, Stephenson said.

Stephen Keppler, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said truckers often face a tough choice at many railroad crossing because of a lack of space.

“The driver has to make a decision, and either decision requires him to break the law — whether he sits on the railroad crossing and obeys a traffic device, or he doesn’t sit on the crossing and has to run the red light,” Keppler said.

A spokeswoman for the American Association of Railroads said the organization supports the rule, but so far, there have been no written comments expressed in support or opposition to the new proposal.

One of the vocal opponents of the first proposed rule, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, suggested that the problem won’t go away unless there are design fixes at many of the railroad crossings.

Todd Spencer, OOIDA’s executive vice president, said drivers too often face a dilemma when they approach an unfamiliar railroad crossing, particularly in congested urban areas where there may be several tracks.

“We’ve pointed out that, in urban areas, truck drivers have to contend with automobiles that would give no thought whatsoever to pulling out in front or stopping in a particular space that would have an impact on a commercial truck driver,” Spencer said.