U.S. Deportment 

of Transportation 

Federal Railroad 

Administration 

FEB 1 2 2013 

Joseph E. Shacter 

ADMINISTRATOR 

Director, Division of Public and Intermodal Transportation 

Illinois Department of Transportation 

100 West Randolph Street, Suite 6-600 

Chicago, IL 60601 

Re: Request for Waiver of Buy America Requirement 

Dear Mr. Shacter: 

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE 

Washington, DC 20590 

This letter is in response to your September 26, 2012 request that the Illinois Department of 

Transportation (IDOT) be granted a waiver from the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) 

Buy America provision, at 49 U.S.C. § 24405(a)(1), for use in the Incremental Train Control 

System (ITCS), of three components that are not produced in the United States. For the 

following reasons, FRA is granting !DOT's Buy America waiver request. 

In December 2010, IDOT and FRA entered into cooperative agreements to allow IDOT to 

complete the activities necessary to implement high-speed passenger rail service along Union 

Pacific Railroad's (UP) Chicago to St. Louis rail corridor. The project consists of six tasks 

encompassing infrastructure improvements, station improvements, acquiring rolling stock, 

communications, and program management. The overall grant for the Chicago-St. Louis High 

Speed Rail Corridor development is $1.142 billion. 

The subject of this waiver is a project within the larger Chicago to St. Louis rail corridor 

development and pertains to the installation of certain signaling improvements on a 

demonstration segment between Dwight and Joliet, Illinois. The IDOT contracted with Amtrak, 

UP, and General Electric Train Systems (GETS) to build and supply onboard equipment to 

retrofit 20 locomotives with the ITCS for this demonstration. The total cost of the ITCS is 

$2.5 million. 

The ITCS system is manufactured by GETS. The ITCS contains several "end products"-the 

onboard equipment, the wayside equipment, and Amtrak's Departure Testing Center equipment. 

This means that the manufactured products, e.g., the cables, routers, air filtration system, power 

supplies, radios, antennae, displays, and sensors, which are assembled into each end product, are 

components and must be manufactured in the United States. The ITCS's three end products and 

the majority of their components are manufactured at various locations in the United States, 

including drain Valley and Warrensburg, Missouri; Melbourne, Florida; and Chicago, Illinois. 
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The three components included in !DOT's Buy America waiver request are: (1) an Ethernet 

Cable from INET-II Radio to Ethernet Switch; (2) a 900 MHz Omni-directional antenna; and 

(3) a RuggedComm RX-1000 router/server combination. The total cost of the non-domestically 

produced components is approximately $20,000, out of the $2.5 million cost for the ITCS. 

49 U.S.C. § 24405(a)(l) authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to obligate grant funds only if 

the steel, iron, and manufactured goods used in the project are produced in the United States. 

However,§ 24405(a)(2) also permits the Secretary (delegated to the FRA Administrator) to 

waive the Buy America requirements if the Secretary finds that: (A) applying paragraph one 

would be inconsistent with the public interest; (B) the steel, iron, and goods manufactured in the 

United States are not produced in sufficient and reasonably available amount or are not of a 

satisfactory quality; (C) rolling stock or power train equipment cannot be bought or delivered to 

the United States within a reasonable time; or (D) including domestic material will increase the 

cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent. 

The FRA believes a waiver is appropriate under 49 U.S.C. §24405(a)(2)(B) because 

domestically produced components meeting the specific technical and design needs of the ITCS 

are not available. Moreover, custom-designed components are not "reasonably available" given 

the short timeframe associated with positive train control (PTC) implementation, low dollar 

value ofthe two components as installed onjust20 locomotives, and only one router/server 

combination needed for the entire project. 

The manufacturer of the ITCS, General Electric Transportation Systems (GETS), estimates that 

it would cost more than $1 million and take approximately six months to one year to accomplish 

the redesign and testing of parts made by a domestic manufacturer, assuming one would come 

forth to do so. Additionally, the need to continue the revenue demonstration testing of the ITCS 

equipment, which is a PTC system that the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 requires be 

installed on certain rail lines by December 31, 2015, is essential to continued progress toward 

implementing this important safety technology. The successful demonstration tests were 

conducted in October 2012, and any further delay could result in additional costs and risk that 

the PTC system may not be fully tested for implementation prior to the 2015 statutory deadline. 

The FRA believes that such costs in both time and money make the components not "reasonably 

available" and, therefore, a waiver is appropriate. 

Pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 24405(a)(4), FRA will publish this letter granting !DOT's request in the 

Federal Register and provide notice of such findings and an opportunity for public comment 

after which this waiver will become effective. This waiver applies only to the ITCS as installed 

in the Chicago to St. Louis corridor passenger rail service demonstration segment between 

Dwight and Joliet and specifically because of the facts and time constraints associated with this 

limited demonstration project. Any future requests for waivers regarding the ITCS will not be 

granted without a specific showing that domestic products for that particular project are not 

reasonably available at the time any subsequent request is made and GETS has made significant 

good faith efforts to secure all domestic components for the ITCS. The FRA encourages GETS 

to use the services ofthe U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute for Standards and 
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Technology-Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST -MEP). The FRA and NIST -MEP have 

partnered to increase the domestic manufacturing base for rail rolling stock and rail infrastructure 

related products. The FRA can facilitate these discussions, as requested. 

Questions about this letter can be directed to Linda Martin, Senior Attorney-Advisor, at 

Linda.Martin@dot.gov or 202-493-6062. 

Sincerely,