Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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24 commercial carrier journal | november 2015 journal news House highway bill would hide CSA scores, study younger truckers T he U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last month approved a six-year $325 billion highway funding bill that would, if law, remove carrier rankings in the Compliance Safety Accountability program from public view and set up a pilot program for under-21 commercial driver's license holders. The House bill is similar to the Senate's July-cleared Drive Act and includes many of the same trucking industry regulatory reforms. But the House package cur- rently has a different name, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015, and a slightly higher price tag – about $50 billion more than the Senate's $275 billion bill. The House on Oct. 27 passed a short-term funding bill to extend highway appropriations for 22 days beyond the Oct. 29 expiration date, though the Highway Trust Fund has a little change left in its purse to last slightly beyond that. The short-term funding bill extended the expiration date to Nov. 20, which gave lawmakers three more weeks to try to work out a longer-term measure. Highlighting trucking industry reforms in the House bill are its CSA-related provisions that would require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to remove from public view all crash records, violation his- tory and analysis and percentile rankings in CSA's Safety Measurement System BASICs. It also requires the U.S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General to study CSA and produce a "corrective action plan" prior to FMCSA reimplementing the program. Other regulatory reforms include: · Under-21 interstate truckers: The bill would require DOT to produce a study on potentially allowing CDL holders between ages 19½ and 21 to operate interstate. Following the report, the bill dictates that FMCSA set up a pilot program based on the report's recommendations on hours of service for these younger truck operators, manda- tory training standards and potential safety technologies. · Driver drug testing: The bill would allow carriers or drug testing consortia to use hair samples instead of urine samples. · FMCSA rulemaking "impact": The bill would require the agency to further study rules and their impact on car- riers and better consider trucking industry input in the rulemaking process. – James Jaillet Unified Registration System implementation delayed T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month reissued its final rule for the Unified Registration System to delay its effective and compliance dates. Beginning Dec. 12, new applicants – defined by FMCSA as anyone who doesn't have and never has been assigned a U.S. Department of Transportation, Motor Carrier (MC), Freight Forwarder (FF) or Mexico-owned or -controlled (MX) num- ber – will be required to use the new online application when requesting registration. For those who already have USDOT, MC, FF or MX numbers, the new online application and database won't be available until Sept. 30, 2016. FMCSA says once the URS is available for everyone, there won't be a need for separate provisions for new applicants, so the temporary sections will be in effect only from Dec. 12, 2015, through Sept. 29, 2016. The URS then will be available for submission of all new registration requests, tracking appli- cations, updating information and filing biennial updates. FMCSA is giving some carriers an extra three months for compliance to help the transition to the new system. Private hazmat carriers and exempt for-hire carriers registered with FMCSA as of Sept. 30, 2016, will be given three months from that date to file their evidence of compliance with the finan- cial responsibility. Also, all entities registered with FMCSA as of Sept. 30, 2016, will have the same three-month window to file their designation of a process service agent. The agency originally published the URS final rule Aug. 23, 2013. FMCSA estimated a two-year period for development of the system's website to implement the rule and had an initial compliance date of Oct. 23, 2015. FMCSA says it has "experienced challenges completing the IT system necessary to fully implement" the rule. The new dates reflect the revised schedule for the website's completion. The URS will replace four existing systems and combine 16 forms now used by carriers, freight forwarders, brokers and other entities to register and update data. – Matt Cole The House highway bill is being billed as a bipartisan effort that could land the United States its longest-lasting legislation in more than a decade.