By Justin Franz

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for Canadian Pacific told the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on Friday that there is no need to apply more stringent guidelines on its proposed merger with Kansas City Southern. 

Last week, two Class Is, BNSF Railway and Norfolk Southern, filed comments with the STB asking that the board not exempt the CP-KCS merger from a set of guidelines it created in 2001 following the merger mania of the 1990s. Those rules set a higher bar for government approval but exempted the smallest Class I of them all, Kansas City Southern. 

“Those rules would prolong the Board’s review of the transaction, which would in turn delay delivery of the new competition and other public benefits,” attorneys wrote, adding that they would expand further in a following filing. 

If everything goes according to plan, CP hopes to complete the purchase of KCS this year before putting into a separately managed trust. The two railroads would be combined upon STB approval, sometime in 2022.