The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS) strongly opposes the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) partial approval of the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) petition for waiver of compliance with 49 CFR §213.233. The decision to reduce required in-person track inspections and to deny a public hearing requested by multiple parties represents a deeply concerning shift from transparency and proven safety practice toward decision-making that favors industry convenience over public accountability.
The BRS represents the men and women responsible for installing, inspecting, maintaining, and repairing signal systems and highway-rail grade crossings nationwide. Our members’ work depends directly on the reliability of the track structure. Reducing the frequency of visual inspections erodes the foundation of rail safety that signal and track crafts collectively sustain.
The AAR’s petition sought to replace the required twice-weekly visual inspections with automated geometry measurements and limited human verification. While BRS supports innovation that enhances safety, technology cannot replace the judgment, coordination, or immediacy of response that qualified inspectors provide. Boots-on-the-ground inspections routinely identify conditions that automated systems miss—particularly at interlockings, crossings, and other complex environments where track and signal systems interact.
Equally troubling is the procedural deficiency of AAR’s petition. Under 49 CFR §211.9(b), waiver requests must identify the locations and installations to which they apply. AAR’s petition failed to do so, instead requesting authority on behalf of an entire industry without disclosing affected routes or properties. Compounding this concern, the FRA denied multiple requests for a public hearing, an uncommon departure from established practice when significant safety implications are involved. While not explicitly required by regulation, public hearings have historically ensured that affected stakeholders can review and challenge industry data before waivers are granted. Granting a blanket waiver under these conditions effectively converts a site-specific waiver process into a de-facto nationwide rulemaking, undermining both the spirit and the letter of the regulation.
By authorizing this waiver, FRA has set a precedent that weakens one of the most important safeguards in railroad oversight: independent, frequent, human inspection. Reducing inspection frequency by half does not strengthen safety—it compromises it. The decision also risks normalizing similar efforts to erode inspection standards under other federal regulations, including Parts 234 and 236, which govern the very systems that protect the public at grade crossings and control train movements.
For these reasons, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen respectfully urges the FRA to reconsider this decision, revoke the waiver in its current form, and convene a formal public hearing under 49 CFR §211.25 to ensure full and transparent review. The FRA waived the hearing and partially granted the waiver even though the supporting data was never produced to justify such action. Rather than requiring the data upfront, FRA is allowing railroads to gather the necessary information through a so-called “trial,” when that data should be proven and evaluated before being applied in real-world conditions.
Safety should never be subject to experimentation. Technology must enhance—not replace—the human expertise that keeps America’s rail network safe.
