Today, Rail Passengers Association filed comments with the Surface Transportation Board arguing that Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have a basic problem with their proposed merger: when it comes to passenger rail, they still haven’t shown enough for the Board to make the findings the law requires them to make.
There’s a legal phrase for this: prima facie. In plain English, before you ask the government to approve a merger of this size, you have to put enough facts and evidence on the table for regulators to determine whether the deal serves the public interest.
We don’t think UP and NS have done that.
This is especially important because the proposed combination would put an extraordinary share of America’s existing and planned passenger-rail network in the hands of one railroad. Our analysis found that 43 of the 69 projects selected for the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program potentially use UP or NS infrastructure. Twenty-two of those 43 overlap at least one segment where the Applicants themselves project additional freight traffic.
And on the passenger routes operating today, the numbers deserve answers. We examined 53 route-and-segment pairings for which the Applicants quantified traffic changes. Forty-two would see additional freight traffic. UP and NS nevertheless label capacity “sufficient” for 31 of those affected pairings — without showing, in operational terms, how the additional trains will actually fit.
And that’s really the heart of our objection.
In May, the Board specifically asked the Applicants to explain in a supplemental filing how passenger trains would actually be affected by the merger. Yet we still don’t have a timetable-based operating model showing when these additional freight trains will run. We don’t have a passenger-specific dispatching plan showing where freight and passenger trains will meet, pass, or compete for terminal capacity. Much of the underlying capacity analysis remains confidential. And the Applicants’ statistical analysis looks backward at historical monthly averages rather than showing how their proposed post-merger railroad will actually operate.
That’s pretty important, because as we all know today’s baseline isn’t exactly something to celebrate. Both railroads already host passenger services suffering substantial freight-related delay. Just hand-waving away the required passenger-rail showing by promising that passengers won’t be worse off after the merger is not the same thing as demonstrating that passenger transportation will be adequate.
We’re also troubled by the Applicants’ treatment of future passenger service. Congress created and funded the Corridor ID program specifically to develop new routes and expand existing ones. Yet the merger analysis effectively assumes that today’s passenger timetable will remain frozen in place. A railroad can’t project years of future freight growth when describing the benefits of its merger, then pretend future passenger growth is too uncertain to consider.
So, we’ve joined the Joint Shipper Associations in asking the Board to summarily deny the application. Our passenger analysis provides an independent reason to do so: the Applicants have not supplied the transaction-specific evidence the Board needs, both in the law and in the regulations, to evaluate the effect of this merger on passenger transportation.
That isn’t our only argument. Now that the case is moving forward, we’ve also explained why we believe the passenger record weighs against the merger on the merits. And if the Board ultimately approves the transaction, we’re asking for enforceable protections covering capacity, performance, transparency, future passenger development, and the preservation of existing passenger-service rights and remedies.
But those are the next questions. The first one is simpler: If UP and Norfolk Southern want permission to create the nation’s largest railroad, they need to show the Board how their plan will actually work for the passengers sharing those tracks.
So far, they haven’t.
You explained what I see as the largest issue for passenger rail in the merger from someone who travels well over 150 hours per year on Amtrak alone, mostly on those two railroads tracks.
Their excuse is nothing new just doubled If the merger goes through as is.
I see this as one of our most important issues other than funding rail passenger services & if they get there way they would happily get rid of all passenger trains on their routes.
Keep up the good work; jim