UPNS Still Working To Answer STB’s Public Interest Queries

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern this week submitted the first installment of their response to the Surface Transportation Board’s May order requiring additional information about their proposed merger. As expected, the filing focuses chiefly on technical questions surrounding ownership interests in the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis, Kansas City Terminal Railway, and TTX.

The bigger filing is still to come. In the introduction to their latest filing, UP and NS say they expect to submit the remainder of their responses on or before July 27, including material “bearing directly on the substantial public benefits of the proposed transaction and why the merger satisfies the statutory public-interest standard.”

A postcard promoting the merger during Big Boy’s recent nationwide tour

In accepting, tentatively, the revised UP-NS application back in May, the STB also posed a series of questions the Board had apparently hoped that revised filing would have answered but did not. One of the Board’s passenger-rail supplemental information requests asked essentially the same question Rail Passengers Association and others have already been asking publicly: how can anyone independently verify UP-NS’s claims about future capacity and passenger compatibility when so much of the underlying modeling remains shielded behind confidentiality restrictions? (STB’s decision accepting the application but posing questions can be found here.)

That filing later this month is probably going to be one of the most important yet in the proceeding. STB was pretty clear that it expects applicants to provide a more complete record before the merger can move forward, and the July 27 submission should begin to answer many of the questions raised by the Board in May.

Rail Passengers Association will be reviewing that filing closely, particularly where it addresses issues affecting passenger rail service and future transportation capacity.