The regulator turns on the lights, and the numbers show service getting worse

For years the argument over railroad service quality was a matter of anecdote and complaint. This year, for the first time, it is a matter of published record, and the record is not flattering.

The Surface Transportation Board has begun disclosing standardised service metrics, including on-time arrival accuracy and the reliability of spot-and-pull at customer facilities, making it possible to compare carriers on the same terms. The timing is pointed. It arrives as the Board weighs the largest rail merger in a generation, a deal whose backers promise smoother, faster service, and whose critics point to the 1996 Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger, after which service collapsed, as the reason to distrust such promises.

The early data undercuts the optimism. According to analysis from logistics firm WSI, average processing times at some regional yards and gateways have risen 5 to 12 per cent, while demurrage charges, the fees shippers pay when cars sit too long, have climbed 8 to 15 per cent year on year. The implication is uncomfortable for an industry selling reliability: service quality is deteriorating even as volumes grow, and a shipper's real-world experience now depends as much on the strength of its logistics partner as on the railroad itself.

The volumes, for their part, remain strong. AAR data for the week ending 1 August showed US traffic up 2.4 per cent year on year, carried entirely by intermodal, which rose 4.8 per cent as shippers shifted freight off the highway to dodge climbing truckload rates. Carloads slipped 0.4 per cent, with metallic ores and grain rising and coal falling nearly 8 per cent, its long structural decline unbroken.

For regulators the transparency is the story. A merger is easier to approve when nobody can measure the results. That is no longer the case.