Annual Tank Car Facility Survey

Section 7308(c) of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015 (FAST Act) directs the Secretary of Transportation to conduct a survey of tank car facilities, commonly referred to as tank car shops, to obtain an estimate of tank cars projected to be modified or built to the new safer Department of Transportation (DOT) specification 117 or 117R. To satisfy the FAST Act requirements, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) has implemented a data collection from facilities that are certified to build and retrofit tank cars. Specifically, BTS collects data from tank car retrofitting and manufacturing facilities on their planned and projected number of tank cars to be retrofitted or manufactured for the calendar year and continuing an annual basis through 2029, per the legislation. Any facility identified with the capacity to build or modify new tank cars to the 117 or 117R specification, as described in Section 7308(c) of the FAST Act, will be included in the survey. This is estimated to be a relatively small universe of no more than 140 facilities. The data collection is comprised of only questions that can gather this information from tank car shops and is expected to have minimal burden. In accordance with Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, BTS will ensure that all responses to this census are kept confidential to the extent allowable by law. Only summary information in the form of aggregated estimates will be made public so as not to identify, directly or indirectly, individual respondents or responses.

The latest form for Annual Tank Car Facility Survey expires 2027-07-31 and can be found here.