Petition for Waiver of Compliance

In accordance with part 211 of Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), notice is hereby given that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) received a request for a waiver of compliance with certain requirements of its safety standards. The individual petition is described below, including the party seeking relief, the regulatory provisions involved, the nature of the relief being requested, and the petitioner's arguments in favor of relief.

WABCO Locomotive Products

WABCO Locomotive Products (WABCO), a Wabtec company, seeks to amend an existing waiver of compliance to include its new FastBrake line of electronic air brake equipment. The existing waiver, FRA-2002-13397 (a renewal of H-92-3), conditionally extends to five years clean, repair and test intervals for certain pneumatic air brake components contained in 49 CFR 229.27(a)(2) and 49 CFR 229.29(a) for WABCO's EPIC electronic air brake equipment.

In support of this proposal, WABCO states that “virtually all of the core pneumatic technology that has been service proven in EPIC from the time of its introduction and documented as such under the provisions of the above waiver” has been transferred into FastBrake “with little or no change.” They state that “A further reduction of pneumatic logic devices has been made possible by the substitution of computer based logic.” WABCO also provides a discussion of the similarities between EPIC and FastBrake as well as the differences, which are primarily in the area of electronics rather than pneumatics. In conclusion, WABCO states, “On the basis of the technical information provided, this waiver amendment can be accomplished without a compromise of safety.”

Interested parties are invited to participate in these proceedings by submitting written views, data, or comments. FRA does not anticipate scheduling a public hearing in connection with these proceedings since the facts do not appear to warrant a hearing. If any interested party desires an opportunity for oral comment, they should notify FRA, in writing, before the end of the comment period and specify the basis for their request.

All communications concerning these proceedings should identify the appropriate docket number (e.g., Waiver Petition Docket Number 2002-13397) and must be submitted to the Docket Clerk, DOT Docket Management Facility, Room PL-401 (Plaza Level), 400 7th Street, SW., Washington, DC 20590. Communications received within 30 days of the date of this notice will be considered by FRA before final action is taken. Comments received after that date will be considered as far as practicable. All written communications concerning these proceedings are available for examination during regular business hours (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) at the above facility. All documents in the public docket are also available for inspection and copying on the Internet at the docket facility's Web site at http://dms.dot.gov.

Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the Federal Register published on April 11, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 70; Pages 19477-78). The Statement may also be found at http://dms.dot.gov.