More than three months after the U.S. Surface Transportation Board rejected its initial application as “incomplete,” Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern submitted a revised petition on April 30 as part of their ongoing effort to create the largest single railroad in American history.
Meanwhile, BNSF Railway and CPKC joined a group of shippers and unions to oppose the proposed combination, launching a new organization called the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition.
Like the initial one in late 2025, the revised application is more than 7,000 pages. In it, UP officials state that they have provided additional details regarding their acquisition of NS, including an updated analysis that uses actual traffic data from all six North American Class I carriers. In the past, merger analyses have only used data provided by the STB. That more detailed analysis also allowed the railroads to provide a more accurate picture of proposed capacity improvements. In fact, the railroads said they would be spending less on capacity now that they had a better picture of what they would need to do.
“After completing the additional work requested by the STB, the facts remain clear: This merger enhances competition and delivers real public benefits that make America’s supply chain stronger,” said Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena. “Our analysis uses complete systemwide traffic data provided by all Class I railroads to identify even more opportunities for our combined railroad to grow and compete.”
Additionally, UP and NS announced that they would not move to control the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. Instead, as a condition of the merger, the two Class Is would sell some of their shares to other carriers so that the combined railroad would not control more than 50 percent of it. UP presently owns 42.84 percent of the railroad and NS owns 14.29 percent, with other Class Is owning the remainder.
UP continues to tout the benefits of the combination, noting that there will be “virtually no overlap” when the two roads are combined into one 50,000-mile system serving 43 states.
But not everyone supports the creation of a single, coast-to-coast railroad. The day before the revised merger application was submitted, the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition was launched to argue against it. Along with BNSF and CPKC, the coalition includes the American Chemistry Council, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Teamsters Rail Conference, the Alliance for Chemical Distribution, the National Industrial Transportation League and the Vinyl Institute. Among the group’s chief arguments against the merger is how the last major UP acquisition — the takeover of Southern Pacific in 1996 — wreaked havoc on the rail network for months.
“This did not begin with a customer asking for a UP-NS merger to happen,” said BNSF Railway President and CEO Katie Farmer. “It’s driven by Wall Street on the promise of a big shareholder payout. It will eliminate competition, raise costs for consumers, and destabilize the supply chain that powers the American economy.”
—Justin Franz
