The Surface Transportation Board (STB) on May 8 reported several actions in continuation of its work “to enhance, focus, and automate agency data collections as part of a broader data modernization initiative.”
The STB issued a Final Rule in Updating Class I Rail Carrier Reporting Requirements, Docket No. EP 787, “streamlining and improving” reporting requirements for Class I railroads (download below). The final rule, the Board said, eliminates the now-unnecessary supplemental reporting of Positive Train Control (PTC) expenditures by Class I’s. It also requires the Class I’s to begin weekly reporting to the Board of two service metrics: original estimated time of arrival (OETA) and industry spot and pull (ISP). These will allow the Board “to better observe trends in the industry and assess changes in rail service levels.”
“The OETA metric measures a carrier’s success in meeting its estimated arrival times for shipments,” the STB reported. “The final rule calculates OETA as the percentage of all manifest shipments on a carrier’s system in a week that were delivered to the designated destination no later than 24 hours after the OETA.” According to the Board, the final rule also makes changes to the proposed OETA definition “to clarify issues concerning interline movements, original trip plan creation, and situations where a shipper is unable to accept a car.”
“The ISP metric measures a rail carrier’s success in performing local placements (’spots’) and pick-ups (’pulls’) of loaded railcars and unloaded private or shipper-leased railcars at shippers’ or receivers’ facilities during planned service windows,” the STB reported. “The final rule requires carriers to report the ISP metric for each of its operating divisions and the carrier’s overall system, and calculates ISP as the percentage of total scheduled spots or pulls that were successfully performed during the planned service windows.” The final rule, it noted, also makes changes to the proposed definition of OETA “concerning issues related to railroad-supplied unloaded cars, the re-ordering of cars after missed deliveries, bad-ordered cars, and situations where a shipper is unable to accept a car.”
The Board’s final metrics are said to allow for “certain flexibility in carrier reporting, designed to allow each carrier to report the data to the Board consistent with the manner in which they track it in the ordinary course of business, with the goal of establishing a time series of individual carrier performance.” The final rule establishes July 1, 2026, as the initial reporting date for these metrics. Each carrier is required to provide with its initial data submission a document explaining its methodology for deriving its data, which will be posted on the STB’s website.
Also on May 8, the STB launched a beta version of its Open Data Portal, which it explained “starts with organizing and visualizing the Board’s EP 724 rail service data as part of the agency’s ongoing data modernization efforts.” The Portal is slated to improve the “transparency, accessibility, and usability” of the agency’s EP 724 data. Located on its website at Reports & Data, it provides centralized access to machine-readable data, converting information that was previously available only in weekly spreadsheets into a more “user-friendly” format. The STB said that users can easily export its service data to their preferred analytical platforms or large language models.
According to the STB, the Portal also offers basic graphic data visualizations of key service metrics, such as cars online and train speed, “to help the public more easily interpret the data.” The Board said it plans to expand the Open Data Portal over time to include all public data it collects and to improve the visualizations offered to the public.
In other Board actions, it issued a decision closing the docket in First-Mile / Last-Mile Service, Docket No. EP 767 (download below), because “that separate docket is no longer necessary with the metrics adopted today [May 8] in EP 787.” The Board also reported denying a petition to reconsider its decision not to extend required reporting of certain railroad service performance data in Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service – Railroad Reporting, Docket No. EP 770 (Sub-No. 1), and closing both that docket and Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service, Docket No. EP 770, “as the Board transitions from those emergency data collections to the more sustainable, permanent metrics established in EP 787” (download below).
Further Reading:
- STB Seeks to Streamline, Improve Class I Data Collection
- STB Looks to Streamline Operations
- STB Aims to Reform Rail Permitting
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