Revision of Method for Calculating Monetary Threshold for Reporting Rail Equipment Accidents/Incidents; Announcement of Reporting Threshold for Calendar Year 2006

FRA is amending a portion of the accident reporting regulations. Specifically, FRA is amending the method for calculating the monetary threshold for reporting rail equipment accidents/ incidents. The amendment is necessary because, in 2001, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) ceased collecting and publishing railroad wage data used by FRA in the calculation. Consequently, FRA has had to seek a new source of publicly-available data. In the new formula, FRA uses wage data collected and maintained by the Surface Transportation Board (STB) in place of the unavailable BLS wage data. As equipment data remain available from the BLS, there is no change to the source of the equipment component of the reporting threshold. The purpose of the rule is to ensure and maintain comparability between different years of accident data by having the threshold keep pace with any increases or decreases in equipment and labor costs so that each year accidents involving the same minimum amount of railroad property damage are included in the reportable accident counts. In addition, FRA is using the newly established formula to calculate a new accident/incident monetary reporting threshold for calendar year 2006. This final rule increases the monetary threshold for reporting rail equipment accidents/incidents from $6,700 to $7,700, and applies to accidents and incidents involving railroad property damage that occur on or after January 1, 2006.