Federal Highway Administration
400 Seventh Street, SW
Washington, DC 20590

Refer to: HOTO-1

The Honorable Sherwood Boehlert
Member, U.S. House of Representatives
Alexander Pirnie Federal Building, Room 200
10 Broad Street
Utica, NY 13501-1270

Dear Congressman Boehlert:

Thank you for your June 19 and July 1 letters to the Office of Congressional Affairs transmitting correspondence from your constituent, Mr. James R. Petrozello of Advantec Development Inc., regarding his company’s Stop/Slow Paddles. Your letters have been forwarded to the Federal Highway Administration for reply.

Mr. Petrozello wishes to make some changes to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) to include his Stop/Slow paddle. In order to make changes to the MUTCD, we must publish the Notice to Proposed Amendment (NPA) in the Federal Register. This allows all interested parties to make comments on the proposed changes. On May 21, we published an NPA in the Federal Register to the MUTCD, Revision 2. There is a 90-day comment period for the public to respond to proposed changes for this NPA. The closing date for docket comments is August 19.

As noted in our April 2 letter to Mr. Daniel Paddick of the New York State Department of Transportation, copy enclosed, we forwarded a copy of the experimentation report on "Effectiveness of STOP SLOW Paddles Equipped with Flashing Red and Flashing Yellow Lights" to the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (NCUTCD) for review and comment. The NCUTCD provides advice and guidance to the Federal Highway Administration on changes to the MUTCD. The NCUTCD meets twice a year: once in January and once in June. We expect to receive input from the NCUTCD, including comments on this device in August.

We will use the input from the NCUTCD along with comments from Mr. Petrozello’s June 12 letter (docket document number FHWA-2001-11159-20), as well as other comments, prior to making a final determination on the proposed changes to the MUTCD. We expect the next revision to the MUTCD to be released in Spring 2003.

For future reference purposes, please mention the following official experimentation number and title in your request: 6-117(E)- Stop/SLOW Paddle. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Mr. Ernie Huckaby of the Office of Transportation Operations at 202-366-9064.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey F. Paniati
Acting Associate Administrator for Operations
Acting Director, ITS Joint Program Office