By Timothy Cama, Staff Reporter This story appears in the Sept. 2 print edition of Transport Topics.
Members of Congress are asking Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx for a timeline for when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will complete a study on the changes to the hours-of-service restart provision.
Update: The representatives said Sept. 3 that they sent the letter Aug. 29.
In last year’s highway funding law, known as MAP-21, Congress requested a field study on the restart changes by this March.
Reps. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.), Trey Radel (R-Fla.) and Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) have circulated the letter they are sending to Foxx.
“Even with the field study unfinished, the FMCSA finalized and enacted these untested new HOS regulations,” they wrote. “We request that the FMCSA establish and provide to us the date on which the efficacy study required by MAP-21 and full report will be completed and submitted to Congress.”
About 50 members of Congress had signed on to the letter as of last week, said Renée Gamela, spokeswoman for Hanna.
Gamela said the letter would be sent before Sept. 2.
The HOS rule changes took effect July 1. The restart, which drivers can use to reset their weekly driving limits, can be used only once every seven days, and it must include two periods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.
FMCSA’s contractor for the restart study completed data collection in July, and the agency plans to release the final report later this year, said Duane DeBruyne, an agency spokesman.
FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro has defended her agency’s decision to go forward with the rule before completing the study.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld all the changes to the restart in an Aug. 2 decision.
But the representatives who wrote the Foxx letter expressed “deep concern” about the new rule.
The rule will “greatly decrease driver flexibility and raise costs for the already overburdened trucking industry — at a potential cost of up to $376 million annually to this single industry alone,” the congressmen said, citing a figure from the American Transportation Research Institute.
The four congressmen who wrote the letter had planned to introduce an amendment in July that would have overturned the rule for a year. However, the appropriations bill they planned to amend was pulled from consideration before they could introduce the change.
They have said they plan to introduce the amendment when the bill comes up for consideration in September.
