Each fall, ASLRRA selects railroads achieving the most impressive safety records to receive the President’s Awards, based on safety data reported to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in the previous year.
For 2026, sixteen President’s Award winners were chosen in three award categories, based on their safety performance. Awards are based on data submitted by railroads on their monthly FRA F6180.55 forms, as well as any required accident/incident reporting forms in 2025.
"Annually, the President’s Awards recognize the best of the best of our member railroads in safety performance. With freight rail safety at all-time high levels, these awards have never been harder to win,” said ASLRRA President Chuck Baker.
"The President’s Award winners showcase the results of the ‘safety first’ mentality of railroading, practiced relentlessly 365 days a year. I offer a huge congratulations and a thank you to the award winners and all the competitors, and am thrilled to celebrate short line freight rail safety."
To be eligible in any of the three award categories, members were required to meet these identical criteria:
The Small and Independent award category was divided into two even segments, based on total employee-on-duty hours, among members also meeting these criteria:
Railroads eligible for the yard and switching award category were divided into four groups (quartiles) based on ranking first the percentage of train miles reported as yard or switching miles and then based on total yard or switching miles. To be considered for this group, a member must:
All member railroads in the Class II, III or Switching railroad categories were considered for awards in the general award category. These general awards were given to the railroad with the lowest incident rate in each quintile based on either employee-on-duty hours or train-miles. For ties within a given quintile, the railroad with the highest total of the statistic defining the quintile were given priority for awards.
Members are limited to winning one President’s Award per year. If a railroad finished first in more than one award category, priority was given based on the order of the categories:
In previous years, the President’s Awards used nearly the same criteria as the Jake Awards. Railroads competed within four ASLRRA regions and were grouped into five categories based on employee-on-duty hours.
This structure created large differences in the number of railroads competing in each category. Most ASLRRA members fell into the category for railroads with fewer than 50,000 employee-on-duty hours, while very few railroads qualified for the larger-hour categories.
The uneven number of railroad members across regions made this imbalance even greater. In recent years, the problem has become so significant that ASLRRA has been unable to award President’s Awards in every category. In some categories, no railroads met the performance threshold for a Jake Award, while other categories had no eligible railroads at all.
For 2026, ASLRRA chose to remove the linkage with individual regions for award criteria, and balance railroad groupings by even percentile splits of eligible railroads within an award category. This has resulted in much more competitive award groupings.
ASLRRA has also taken the opportunity to consider additional criteria for the awards, to highlight strong safety performers among specific segments of our membership. The Association plans to consider other criteria or groupings for awards in future years, allowing the ability to demonstrate in more distinct ways how members are improving the safety of their operations.
For any questions related to the President’s Award criteria or calculations, please reach out to Fred Oelsner.
