WASHINGTON, D.C. — Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and six major U.S. freight railroads will begin making weekly data on their performance available starting today, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported.

After meeting last fall with shippers upset by persistent service troubles, the railroads promised to make performance data available every week in order to improve communications. Customers will be able to access the reports via the Web site of their primary carrier. Each company will list four detailed indicators of how well traffic is moving through its system: the total cars on line; average train speed; average terminal dwell time; and freight cars received without a bill of lading.

“Railroad customers told us they wanted more information and they wanted it updated frequently,” said AAR president and CEO Edward R. Hamberger.

“Although railroads have long had similar information available for their own internal uses, it is unprecedented for them to make it public,” Hamberger said. “Rail customers will be able to use that data to determine what is happening on each railroad.”

The railroads taking part are Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., Canadian National Railway Co., Canadian Pacific Ltd., CSX Corp., Illinois Central Corp., Kansas City Southern Industries Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp.and Union Pacific.

Hamberger warned that “it would be inappropriate and inaccurate to use the raw data for comparing one railroad’s performance with another,” since operating differences among railroads, traffic mix, weather, and terrain affect average train speed, number of cars on line, and terminal dwell time. In addition, these measurements are not uniformly calculated across the industry and are therefore inappropriate for comparison, he added.