What does the 2025 Infrastructure Report Card rating for America's rail tell us?
- Tate Linden
- Mar 28
- 2 min read
The 2025 Infrastructure Report Card by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. rail a B-. On the surface, that’s great news. It’s the second-highest grade received across all infrastructure categories. But it also highlights a deeper tension in how we define success.
But first, I want to be clear, this isn't on the railroads.
When compared to the rest of our infrastructure, freight railroads have largely done exactly what they’re supposed to do: invest in their networks, maintain reliability, and focus on long-term performance for shareholders. Unlike highways or airports, which are mostly funded by taxpayers, U.S. railroads are private companies responsible for maintaining their own infrastructure, and their follow-through appears more consistent than what we see on our nation’s roads.
But if you live in a town with regularly blocked crossings, train noise, or safety risks at rail-adjacent schools and intersections, that B- might feel overly generous.
There’s a reason for that dissonance. The report appears to measure operational strength and capital investment - but not the day-to-day impact on the communities rail runs through. It doesn’t ask whether emergency vehicles can get through. It doesn’t account for trains that pass without stopping, or arrive in the middle of the night. And it doesn’t benchmark the U.S. against countries with world-class passenger systems like Japan, France, Germany, or China.
Globally (and particularly regarding passenger rail) we’re not just behind, we’re structurally out of sync. In most countries, rail infrastructure is designed with community integration in mind and funded with considerable investment from the government. But here in the US, our legal framework, rooted in the Commerce Clause, gives freight railroads federal preemption over most state and local laws. That means they don’t have to coordinate with the towns they move through, even when infrastructure decisions have serious local consequences.
This isn’t about blame. Railroads are doing what they were built to do. But the system we’ve created makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, for communities to meaningfully shape the infrastructure that cuts through their neighborhoods, downtowns, and school zones.
If we want to close the gap between performance on paper and lived experience on the ground, we need new mechanisms, ones that continue to respect operational efficiency and protect profitability while also enabling communities to engage, prepare, and adapt.
Thriving railroads and thriving towns should each be the result of the other, and right now, that connection could use strengthening.