New Rail Bill Mandates Reliable Service, Forces Regulators to Resolve Shipping Disputes in Under 6 Months

The Reliable Rail Service Act of 2025 is taking aim at one of the biggest headaches in the supply chain: unreliable freight rail service. This bill updates federal law (specifically Section 11101 of title 49) to make it crystal clear that when a shipper requests service, the rail carrier must provide it in a way that meets the shipper’s needs for timeliness, efficiency, and reliability. Essentially, the law is moving past vague obligations and demanding that rail companies actually step up and meet the reasonable expectations of the businesses relying on them to move goods, which is a big deal for everyone from farmers to manufacturers.

The Fine Print: What Counts as 'Bad Service' Now

If you're a business owner who relies on rail—say, a lumber yard waiting on materials or a chemical plant shipping product—and your rail service is terrible, you can file a complaint with the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Before this bill, the STB had a lot of flexibility in how it judged these cases. Now, the STB is required to look at specific, operational factors when deciding if a carrier failed to provide reasonable service. This is where the rubber meets the rail, because the Board must now examine things like:

• Staffing Cuts: Did the carrier reduce the number of clerical, maintenance, or train/engine employees, and did that hurt service? This directly links service quality back to corporate decisions on staffing levels.
• Equipment Quality: Are there problems because equipment is poorly maintained, or because the carrier is shuffling cars around too much between customers?
• Scheduling Changes: Did cuts to service frequency or changes to local schedules mess up the shipper's ability to operate reliably?

This is a massive shift because it forces regulators to look directly at the operational decisions—like cost-cutting measures—that often lead to service failures. It makes it much harder for a rail carrier to argue that poor service is just an unavoidable cost of doing business.

Speeding Up the Complaint Line

One of the most practical changes for busy people is the introduction of hard deadlines for the STB to resolve disputes. Historically, these cases could drag on for years, which is death for a business relying on timely shipping. The Reliable Rail Service Act mandates that if a shipper complains about a service violation, the STB must finish its investigation and issue a ruling within 180 days (about six months) of starting the case. If the case is just about setting specific service terms—like defining a reasonable cycle time for moving cars—the deadline is even tighter: 45 days.

Furthermore, if the STB finds a carrier did fail to provide service when reasonably requested, the Board is empowered to order the carrier to set specific transit times or service standards. This means the ruling isn't just a slap on the wrist; it can force the rail company to implement concrete, measurable improvements tailored to the shipper’s needs. For the farmer waiting on fertilizer shipments or the factory shipping finished goods, this means a faster path to accountability and a better chance of getting predictable service in the future.

Real-World Impact: Who Benefits and Who Pays?

This legislation is a clear win for shippers—the businesses that rely on freight rail. They get clearer expectations, a stronger legal footing for complaints, and a regulatory process that is finally moving at a reasonable speed. Indirectly, this could help stabilize supply chains, potentially easing costs and delays for consumers down the line, especially for goods like fuel, grain, and manufactured components that move heavily by rail.

The groups feeling the heat are the rail carriers themselves. They now face increased regulatory scrutiny and potentially mandated operational changes—including staffing and maintenance requirements—that could impact their bottom line. While the bill acknowledges that carrier rules should be fair and necessary to cover variable costs, the overall direction is toward prioritizing service reliability over maximizing carrier profit margins. It’s a necessary step toward balancing the power between the massive rail networks and the thousands of businesses dependent on them.