Federal Railroad Safety Accountability and Improvement Act

Bill: 110-s-918
Sponsor: Sen. Lautenberg, Frank R. [D-NJ]
Introduced: 2007-03-19 in the Senate
Policy area: Transportation and Public Works
Subjects: Administrative procedure
Armed Forces and National Security
Authorization
Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues
Collective bargaining
Crime and Law Enforcement
Criminal justice information
Department of Transportation
Discovery (Law)
Economics and Public Finance
Electronic surveillance
Employee selection
Environmental Protection
Evidence (Law)
Federal aid to transportation
Federal preemption
Freedom of information
Government Operations and Politics
Government paperwork
Government publicity
Governmental investigations
Health
Hours of labor
Identification of criminals
Judicial review
Labor and Employment
Law
Maintenance and repair
Occupational health and safety
Public meetings
Radio
Railroad employees
Railroad equipment
Railroad safety
Right-of-way
Science, Technology, Communications
State laws
Technological innovations
Traffic accidents and safety
Transportation of hazardous substances

Summary:
action_date: 2007-03-19
text: 
Federal Railroad Safety Accountability and Improvement Act - Authorizes appropriations for FY2008-FY2011 for the railroad safety program, including a safety risk reduction program to be implemented as part of such program. Eliminates the authority of the Secretary of Transportation (or state Secretary) to prescribe investigative and surveillance activities to enforce rail safety regulations and orders.

Prohibits public disclosure of railroad safety risk reduction program records.

Requires railroad carriers and states to report to the Secretary, and update periodically, unreported highway-rail (including non-vehicular pathway-rail) grade crossings and public highway-rail (including non-vehicular public pathway) grade crossings within the United States.

Urges the development of new technology to prevent loss of life and injuries at highway-rail grade crossings.

Sets forth requirements: (1) prohibiting the judicial review of railroad safety regulations or orders on the ground that they impact security; (2) authorizing the Secretary to waive compliance of such regulations and orders if there is an emergency event, it is in the public interest, and consistent with railroad safety; (3) authorizing the Secretary to monitor railroad radio communications to prevent rail accidents, or as part of an accident investigation; (4) authorizing the Secretary to prohibit individuals who have violated hazardous material transportation safety laws from performing safety-sensitive functions in the railroad industry until specified conditions are met; (5) repealing and reserving codified federal hours of service laws, requiring the conversion of such laws to regulations, and authorizing the Secretary to amend such regulations to prevent and mitigate fatigue in individuals performing safety-critical train related duties; (6) establishing maximum number of hours a train employee may be on duty; and (7) authorizing the Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration and designated employees access to criminal history records of railroad employees.


Legislative actions:
action_date: 2007-03-19
text: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
action_date: 2007-03-19
text: Introduced in Senate