§211.41. Processing of petitions for waiver of safety rules. — Inbound Citations

(a) Except as provided in § 211.41, each petition for a permanent or temporary waiver of a rule, regulation or standard shall be filed and processed as prescribed in §§ 211.7 and 211.9.

(c) If a railroad, or a contractor or subcontractor to the railroad, is no longer eligible to use an automated recordkeeping system to record data subpart B of this part requires, the entity must begin keeping manual or electronic records and must retain its automated records as required under § 228.9(c) unless the entity requests, and FRA grants, a waiver under § 211.41 of this chapter.

(g) After the five-year compliance period, the railroad may petition FRA for approval to discontinue compliance with this part. A railroad shall file a petition, and FRA will process the petition, under the procedures contained in § 211.41 of this chapter. When processing a petition, FRA will reevaluate the railroad's safety performance to determine whether the railroad's RRP has resulted in significant and sustained safety improvements, and whether these measured improvements are likely sustainable in the long term. FRA's evaluation will include a quantitative analysis as described in paragraph (b) of this section, although FRA will not automatically grant a petition to discontinue compliance if the quantitative analysis results do not meet the identification thresholds described in paragraph (b)(2) of this section. For all petitions under this section, FRA will also examine qualitative factors and review information from FRA RRP audits and other relevant sources.