August 13, 2026
David A. Fink
Administrator
Federal Railroad Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue SE
Washington DC, 20590
RE: Certification of Signal Employees
Docket No. FRA-2022-0020
Administrator Fink:
On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I am responding to the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) proposal to rescind the final rule establishing certification program requirements for signal employees. By way of background, TTD consists of 39 affiliated unions, including those representing signal employees, and all other rail crafts. The certification of signal employees is an important step forward for rail safety, and the rescission of this final rule is ill-advised. As such, we urge the FRA to withdraw this proposal. Additionally, we endorse the comments of our affiliates, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD).
Background
First, we must remind the FRA that the 2008 Rail Safety Improvement Act directed the agency to submit a report to Congress addressing whether certification of certain crafts or classes of employees, including railroad signal employees, was necessary to reduce the number and rate of accidents and incidents or to improve railroad safety. In response to Congress’s mandate, the Secretary of Transportation submitted a report to Congress on November 4, 2015, stating that based on FRA’s preliminary research, train dispatchers and signal employees were potentially the most viable candidate railroad crafts for certification. The FRA subsequently issued a task to the Rail Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) in 2017, which was presented again and accepted in 2019, to consider whether rail safety would be enhanced by developing guidance, voluntary standards, and/or draft regulatory language for the certification of signal employees. The FRA rightly recognized the need for signal employees to be certified when it promulgated the final rule in this docket.
As TTD has previously commented, certification requirements reflect the basic principle that certain railroad crafts must have minimum training and proficiency requirements given the safety-critical nature of that work. Signal employees install, inspect, repair, and maintain signal systems, train control technology, hot-box detectors, and other equipment designed to prevent collisions, derailments, and equipment failures. In its 2015 report, the FRA determined that signal employees perform safety-sensitive work, as evidenced by their work on wayside signal and train control systems that are safety-critical for passenger and freight rail operations. Signal employees also perform sophisticated work involving complex positive train control systems. Given their safety-critical work, rescinding basic requirements for training and certification for railroad signal employees is an unnecessary step backward for rail safety.
Industry Petitions for Reconsideration Do Not Justify Rescission
The basis of the FRA’s proposed rescission of Part 246 rests heavily on petitions for reconsideration filed by industry stakeholders, including the Association of American Railroads (AAR), and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA). Those petitions raised implementation issues, which is not a valid basis for eliminating signal employee certification standards. Furthermore, the FRA in January of 2025 published a letter in this docket addressing a number of the industry concerns on which it now proposes to rescind the final rule. Rather than moving forward with rescinding Part 246, we strongly urge the FRA to revisit the solutions it proposed in its January 2025 letter and work toward addressing implementation concerns through separate rulemaking. Adjustments like those previously proposed by the FRA will maintain the benefits of Part 246, address industry concerns, without compromising safety and consistency.
In addition to implementation questions, industry groups raised concerns about the cost of compliance with Part 246. We remind the FRA that the cost of compliance with Part 246 is significantly less than a rail accident or incident that could have been prevented through the training, accountability, and enforcement this regulation provides. The FRA has acknowledged that many of the most important benefits are difficult to calculate, including reductions in accident cleanup costs, environmental damage, property loss, service disruptions, train delays, and broader economic harm caused by rail accidents. Railroad safety should not be judged only by short-term cost calculations.
The proposal to rescind Part 246 also does not adequately justify the rejection of the FRA’s assertion in the 2024 final rule that Part 246 indeed will meaningfully improve safety. In the 2024 final rule, the FRA explained that certification provides tangible safety benefits by requiring signal employees to be adequately trained and qualified, documenting performance, and preventing job hopping without disclosure of prior safety performance. FRA described its work of reviewing tasks performed by signal employees and considering whether they were critical to safety, explaining that (emphasis added):
“As part of FRA’s outreach, a list of tasks performed by signal employees was developed. These tasks generally involved: vital equipment design validation, installation, calibration, testing, maintenance, and repair (interlockings, grade crossings, wayside signal systems, PTC, etc.). FRA reviewed each task to determine whether correctly performing the task was critical to railroad safety; the potential consequences if errors were made while performing the task; and whether there were any recent examples of issues or concerns with respect to the task. After performing this analysis, FRA concluded that the vast majority of tasks performed by signal employees (80-90% of the listed tasks) were critical to railroad safety with potentially catastrophic consequences, such as accidents, injuries, and/or deaths, if the tasks were not performed properly.”
This NPRM offers no discussion about whether its view of the tasks required of signal employees has changed, given its previously held perspective that 80%-90% of these tasks are critical. Nor does the agency offer a reasoned explanation as to how safety will be advanced by abandoning its previous conclusion that certification is an important tool to ensure employees performing such safety-sensitive tasks are adequately trained and qualified.
Conclusion
Again, we urge the FRA to support maintaining and strengthening signal employee certification standards while working with labor organizations and railroads to address reasonable implementation concerns. Keeping these protections in place would promote consistent national training standards, improve workforce professionalism, strengthen accountability, and help ensure the continued safe operation of the nation’s freight, passenger, and commuter rail systems.
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on this proposal and look forward to working with the FRA in the future.
Sincerely,
Greg Regan
President