Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Notable

Amend FRA's 50-year-old track inspection requirements to allow new technology

Not started

636 19. Department of Transportation

“Although FRA could adopt a modern inspection program that takes advantage of technological ways to inspect track, it is refusing to amend 50-year-old track inspection requirements, leaving customers with higher costs.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    FRA's track inspection requirements at 49 CFR part 213 are unamended. What FRA did repeal, in the final rule published on 2026-04-28, is the runoff parameter in the track *surface* geometry standard for track Classes 1 through 5 - a geometry tolerance, not an inspection method, and repealed because other geometry requirements already cover the same defect. What FRA did instead of amending part 213 is the strongest thing on the record and is the second and third Evidence items here, attached under playbook §3b rule 4 as moved nearby. On 2025-12-05 FRA's Railroad Safety Board **granted the AAR waiver in part**: its decision letter in Docket FRA-2025-0059 holds that "partially granting AAR's request by modifying the conditions and expanding the scope to include more railroads will allow the demonstration of the effectiveness of expanded TGMS testing in conjunction with a uniform level of reduced visual inspection and is in the public interest and consistent with railroad safety. Accordingly, the Board grants the waiver, subject to the following conditions" - twelve of them, with FRA intending the waiver "to be available to all railroads (including commuter)", and "[t]his waiver expires 5 years from the date of this letter". Its stated purpose is to gather data and "determine a path forward to increase technology utilization for all railroads, **if appropriate**". The Administrator reaffirmed the approach on 2026-06-24, holding that the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division's petition for reconsideration "does not bring a cognizable claim" and that the Office of Railroad Safety's decision is "REAFFIRMED". **The Status does not move.** A waiver is relief *from* a regulation, granted case by case under 49 CFR part 211 for a fixed five-year term, expressly to gather evidence before deciding whether to change the rule. Part 213 is untouched, and the Quote asks that the 50-year-old requirements be *amended*.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Federal Register full-text, quoted: “automated track inspection” returns exactly one document since 2025-01-20, the AAR waiver-petition notice above. Waiver dispositions do not enter the Federal Register - they go to the docket - which is why the earlier pass could not see the grant.
  • Corrected 2026-09-03, twice over. The docket is FRA-2025-0059, not FRA-2025-0044 as this note previously said. And railroads.dot.gov is not a wall: it opens on the full-headers rung of scripts/fetch-page.mjs. The disposition was read from the docket itself: api.regulations.gov/v4/documents?filter[docketId]=FRA-2025-0059 lists 29 documents, and both decisions were read in full as PDFs from downloads.regulations.gov. (railroads.dot.gov’s own waiver index is useless either way - /legislation-regulations/waivers/waivers is a 404 and the eLibrary waiver search is a 32-character JavaScript shell.) The read-queue row is answered.
  • What happened after the grant, recorded here because none of it changes part 213: railroads filed TGMS Waiver Initial Notifications through 2026, FRA approved Union Pacific’s specific system on 2026-02-11, BMWED petitioned for reconsideration of that approval on 2026-03-06, and the Administrator’s Reconsideration Decision of 2026-06-24 reaffirmed it. The reconsideration decision is at downloads.regulations.gov/FRA-2025-0059-0064/attachment_1.pdf; it is recorded here rather than as a third Evidence item because it concerns the UP approval rather than the rule.
  • A check:urls caution: downloads.regulations.gov answers 403 to a short Mozilla/5.0 User-Agent and 200 to the full Chrome header set. source-apis.md records this and the checker’s retry covers it.
  • A granted waiver would not satisfy this ask in any event: the Quote asks FRA to amend the 50-year-old requirements, which only a rulemaking can do.
Action
other
Object
FRA track inspection requirements
ID
1751