Congress acted to avert confusion and delay on the nation’s rail infrastructure on Wednesday October 28th, 2015 by passing an extension to what had been a looming December 31st, 2015 deadline for railroads to fully implement Positive Train Control, or PTC, control systems on their networks. PTC is a control system that uses Global Positioning…
Infographic | 2015 Regulations in Review
Emergency orders and advisories? Check. Airlines making their own rules? Check. Congress playing politics with key deadlines? No surprise to anyone who’s worked in the world of DG shipping regulations for more than 15 minutes. We know there’s only one constant—change. Download a printable PDF of the Infographic | 2015 Regulations in Review…
Congressional politics threaten PTC extension bill
Just when American railroads were perhaps starting to breathe a bit easier about the December 31st, 2015 Positive Train Control (PTC) deadline account the seeming agreement in the House of Representatives about extending the deadline to 2018 under a pending bill HR 3651, new political roadblocks to passage appear to be arising. On Wednesday October…
Congress advances bill to delay Railroad PTC Mandate
The US House of Representatives has introduced legislation to delay until 2018 the current deadline for US railroads to implement Positive Train Control (PTC) systems on their tracks. As discussed in a previous blog on the subject, the nation’s railroads have jointly stated the physical impossibility of completing such an inter-operative system by the end…
PTC Alert! The Positive Train Control Deadline Creates a Potential Transportation Crisis
UPDATE: Congress advances bill to delay Railroad PTC Mandate Will January 1, 2016 be the day the trains stop? As America’s railroads and Congress fail to agree on extending the December 31 deadline for implementing Positive Train Control systems, that threat inches closer to reality. The railroads have threatened to essentially shut down all service…
Summer Doldrums Allow a Chance to Catch up on GHS
One of the things that Labelmaster does to stay ahead of regulatory requirements for our customers is to monitor the United States Federal Register each day. If you don’t know what that is, it can be briefly described as the “book”—it’s an electronic publication, these days; that the federal government uses to give notice of…
The Sky is NOT The Limit When Shipping DG
It’s been a busy summer for our A.I.R. ShipperTM authoring team. Rolling in the large number of changes developed by ICAO, the UN and the IAEA was a challenge made more difficult with very late changes for lithium metal batteries. In case you hadn’t heard, these will be banned aboard passenger aircraft per the ICAO Technical…
USDOT/PHMSA Releases NPRM on Special Permit and Authority Approval Procedures for Fireworks Policies
In the September 24th 2014 edition of the US Federal Register, the United States Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) published two clarifications of their fireworks policies under Docket #’s PHMSA-2013-0205; Notice No. 14-4 and 14-5 in which the agency sets forth acceptable criteria for defining for classification purposes both…
US Federal Railroad Administration Issues Proposed Rulemaking to Codify Emergency Order 28 of August 2013
At approximately 1:15 AM EST on July 6th, 2013, a unit freight train of the cross-border operating Montreal, Maine, & Atlantic Railroad (MM&A) loaded with crude oil from the Bakken Shale Formations in North Dakota in the western United States suffered a failure of its automatic and manual braking systems while left unattended and presumably…
U.S. DOT Announces Comprehensive Proposed Rulemaking for the Safe Transportation of Crude Oil, Flammable Materials
Releases New Data on Bakken Crude Oil to Support Increased safety Measures DGAC took part in a press conference held at 10:00 AM this morning by Transportation Secretary Anthony R. Foxx. Secretary Foxx was accompanied by FRA Administrator Joseph C. Szabo, and PHMSA Administrator Cynthia L. Quarterman. The Secretary announced that DOT is issuing a…