WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Surface Transportation Board today accepted the Union Pacific (UP)–Norfolk Southern (NS) merger application but delayed the review process to collect vital information that is still missing from the railroads’ revised application. The STB has put a hold on the application as it asks for more information. We appreciate the Board’s thorough and thoughtful approach to make a fully informed decision regarding the largest and most complex rail consolidation in U.S. history.
The Stop the Rail Merger Coalition, representing a broad cross section of the U.S. economy and the majority of union workers of UP and NS, has warned that the merger would reduce competition, hurt workers, drive up costs for American manufacturers, farmers and consumers, and weaken the nation’s supply chain.
“UP and NS have once again submitted an extremely flawed proposal. They have overstated benefits, minimized harms, and left critical questions unanswered. This merger is a bad deal for America and must be rejected,” said the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition.
Under federal law, UP and NS bear the burden of demonstrating substantial and demonstrable public benefits that could not be achieved by other means. The revised application remains insufficient and sidesteps the STB’s public-interest standard and the need to enhance rail-to-rail competition. Specifically, the UP/NS proposal:
- Fails to enhance competition. Not a single existing UP or NS customer would gain a new competitive rail option as a result of this merger.
- Offers weak gateway protections. The Committed Gateway Pricing proposal provides meager protections, specifically excludes shipments of critical chemistries, and covers less than one percent of traffic and expires in five years—while the competitive harm is permanent.
- Lacks accountability for service failures. The Service Assurance Plan lacks enforceability; contract traffic representing a significant share of chemical and industrial shipments is excluded from arbitration entirely.
- Provides insufficient worker protection. There are no binding guarantees for Maintenance of Way workers or Locomotive Engineers on job security, staffing levels, or work preservation.
The proposal takes the same post-merger integration approach that has failed in past mergers with costly results for the U.S. economy. After the 1996 UP–Southern Pacific, 1999 NS-Conrail, and CSX-Conrail mergers, service collapsed across the system and stakeholders are still asking regulators to enforce long-ignored promises decades later. The lesson is simple: merger promises are made freely and almost never delivered.
We continue to encourage every rail customer and other stakeholders to get involved. File a notice of intent to participate. All stakeholders must carefully consider what is being proposed here and fully participate in this process.