(The Chicago Tribune posted the following article on its website on February 2.)
CHICAGO — Chicago-area officials will have a little more time to protect their train whistle bans now that the effective date of a new federal train horn regulation has been pushed back for the second time in recent months.
Federal Railroad Administration officials said last fall that the proposed regulation–which would allow locomotives to blow horns at crossings where they are now banned unless they meet certain risk criteria or unless safety upgrades are made–would go into effect April 1. To meet that date, the rule would have had to be published in the Federal Register by Tuesday, but that didn’t happen because federal officials are still reviewing it.
Steve Kulm, an FRA spokesman, did not know what the new effective date would be, but said the rule would be published in the “near future.”
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the proposal, which it received Nov. 18, an OMB official said Tuesday. That agency must sign off on it before it can be published in the Federal Register. The rule becomes effective 60 calendar days after the publication date, Kulm said.
Illinois congressmen sent a letter to the director of OMB last week, questioning the costs of implementing the rule and the data used to support it. An OMB official said Tuesday the agency welcomes comments from outside groups but uses science and sound cost-benefit analyses.
The delay is another twist in a decadelong battle over the use of locomotive whistles at rail crossings. It has been an especially sensitive issue in the Chicago area, where communities have issued whistle bans to prevent locomotives from sounding their horns around-the-clock at hundreds of crossings in densely populated areas.