Keeping the U.S. Economy Moving

The railway construction and maintenance industry keeps the U.S. economy moving ahead by facilitating the safe, reliable and efficient transportation of goods and people by rail.

• To encourage investment in U.S. railway infrastructure and related job growth, the NRC advocates on the federal, state and local levels on behalf of our more than 400 member contractors and suppliers.
• The NRC informs members through ongoing updates on federal and state transportation infrastructure spending and regulatory issues and coordinates participation on pending legislation and policies.
• The NRC also facilitates participation in Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill and regional grassroots initiatives with access to legislators, policy makers and other railway decision makers to promote a strong industry.
• View the NRC Advocacy Flyer for a recap of advocacy activities and priorities.

NRC Policy and Legislative Priorities for 2025

• ‍Safety – On behalf of the rail contractor and supplier community, the NRC is dedicated to helping the railroads by providing solutions to improve safety even further. Freight rail continues to be the safest way to move goods over land and the last decade was the safest ever for U.S. railroads, with mainline and hazmat accident rates at an all-time low. We urge Congress to use data-driven solutions that would effectively increase the safety of the rail network and avoid policy changes that would place unnecessary or excessive mandates on the rail industry that would not enhance rail safety.
• Truck Size and Weight Limits – The NRC supports maintaining the existing federal truck size and weight maximums to help control damage trucks cause to our highway infrastructure.
• Investment in Infrastructure – A strong rail infrastructure is critical to the vitality of our nation’s economy. The NRC supports robust funding at existing or increased levels for rail grant programs that improve efficiencies, safety and environmentally friendly freight and passenger rail transportation. This includes the FRA Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant program, in particular, which is a vital source of funding for the industry to address key safety improvement projects.  These funds will also help stimulate additional infrastructure investment by states, localities and private sector partners. In addition to CRISI, other critical grant programs include: FRA Rail Crossing Elimination, passenger rail funding through the Federal-State Partnership and Amtrak grants, INFRA, Mega, BUILD, Rural Surface Transportation, and the MARAD Port Infrastructure Development Program.Here are the NRC policy and legislative priorities for 2025:
• THUD Appropriations Accounts for Rail Infrastructure Investment - The NRC supports THUD Appropriations accounts that provide for robust rail infrastructure investment to improve rail safety, efficiency, reliability, and rail access to ports, including USDOT multimodal grant programs, FRA grant programs and FTA New Starts.
• Streamlining the Discretionary Grant Process – The NRC encourages Congress and the Trump Administration to deliver grant funding in a responsible but more expedient manner.
• Competition - The NRC strongly supports increased opportunities for contracting out and competition within these programs to stretch federal funds further. Increased flexibility for railroads, commuter, and passenger rail agencies to contract out work will benefit the industry. Railroad contractors have a long and well-documented history of safely providing quality services at competitive prices.
• Balanced Freight Rail Regulatory Framework – The NRC supports maintaining the market-based regulatory framework for freight railroads overseen by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). This balanced approach protects rail customers by providing an approach to address services concerns while allowing freight railroads to manage their assets and pricing without overt government intervention. In addition, the FRA should limit its regulations and if regulations are necessary, they should be data-driven and easy to implement. Many recent regulations have placed undue paperwork burdens on small businesses including our member companies. Congress and FRA should thoroughly examine existing regulations to ensure they are reasonable and practical to implement. The NRC recommends that the FRA should avoid mandates and more rapidly embrace and allow for readily available technologies that would enhance safety.
• ‍Workforce Development - As an industry we are all struggling to attract and retain a good workforce. Railroads and their partners must understand their rail programs and needs and communicate them better than ever because the labor pool is becoming more expensive and harder to attract and retain. We welcome any initiatives to further educate and recruit workers into the rail industry. The NRC has worked diligently with veterans groups, trade schools, colleges and universities in this area and we would embrace additional collaboration in this effort.
• Environmental Policy and Streamlining – The NRC supports efforts to speed up the federal permitting and review processes in order to deliver critical infrastructure projects without delays and on reasonable timeframes. NEPA and other processes involving multiple federal agencies and levels of government still cause too many delays and unnecessary duplication which prevents many worthy projects from getting the green light. The project delivery process must be reformed by significantly shortening the time it takes to complete reviews and obtain permits. Projects must be designed, approved and built as quickly as possible if we are to meet the huge transportation capacity challenges facing us as a nation. It takes too long to deliver projects, and the waste due to delay in the form of administrative and planning costs, inflation, and lost opportunities for alternative use of the capital, hinder us from achieving our capacity expansion goals. The expediting of transportation projects can be accomplished while retaining all current environmental safeguards.
• Build America and Buy America - Though NRC members are not direct recipients of federal funds, historically NRC members are interested in requirements regarding the American production of materials used in supply and construction. We support efforts to ensure that these mandates come with the recognition that they may be exceedingly difficult to satisfy, and thus the waiver process should be fair and efficient.