America’s first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, born of the Pacific Railway Act that President Abraham Lincoln signed into law seven years earlier. It was meant to knit the country together, coast to coast, on steel rails. So why, more than 150 years later, can’t a shipper move a single load from one ocean to the other without changing railroads partway across the country?
Somewhere in the middle, the train is forced to stop. The freight gets handed off to another carrier, crews change, paperwork piles up, and the customer absorbs longer wait times and higher costs. A century and a half after the golden spike, America still moves freight with a seam running down its middle.
That seam is a structural weakness for the American economy, and the proposed combination of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is a chance to close it.
The Surface Transportation Board accepted the companies’ revised application for consideration in May and, on Aug. 18, adopted a schedule for reviewing its merits. That decision lifted the proceeding from abeyance and set out the next steps for public comment and review; it was not a ruling on whether the merger should be approved.
The board has since denied several motions seeking summary denial of the application, allowing the review to continue under that schedule. Comments and protests are due Nov. 18, and responses are due Feb. 16. The board has not yet set a date for its public hearing. This is how a rigorous review should work: build a complete record, test the claims against it, and decide whether the transaction serves the public interest.
America’s rail network remains patchworked between eastern and western carriers. When freight crosses from one system to another, railcars can sit for days while the receiving railroad works the shipment into its network. Companies shipping cross-country face separate pricing, separate tracking, and another opportunity for delay. A truck has none of those problems, since it can leave a factory and arrive at a customer’s door under one operator and one schedule. That simplicity helps explain why trucking carries roughly two-thirds of the nation’s freight by weight, even though rail moves larger volumes with less congestion, road wear, and carbon emissions.
The merger would give more shippers a comparable rail option, one carrier and one price from origin to destination, with the interchange in the middle removed. That puts positive pressure across the freight market because a more capable railroad is a stronger competitor for long-haul truck traffic.
During my time leading the Virginia Department of Transportation, I saw how the costs imposed by heavy truck traffic consistently weighed on taxpayers. More trucks mean roads that wear out faster, higher maintenance costs, worse congestion, and more dangerous, large vehicles sharing the pavement with motorists.
Federal forecasters expect truck tonnage to keep growing faster than any other mode through 2050, which points toward more of that strain, not less, if freight stays on the road. Railroads, by contrast, invest billions of private dollars in the tracks, bridges, terminals, and signals they use.
The companies’ own analysis, the first in rail merger history to use complete traffic data from all six Class I railroads, estimates the shift could take roughly 2.1 million trucks off the road and save shippers about $3.5 billion a year, with those savings expected to reach consumers. Moving that freight by rail instead of trucks also cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to 75%.
The strongest objection remains the risk that some shippers could lose competitive rail options. Those concerns are narrow and specific, and the companies have addressed them with enforceable conditions that go beyond any prior rail merger. In the companies’ July supplemental information filing, they have expanded competitive gateway pricing, offered protections for customers whose Class I options could narrow, provided for temporary alternative service if integration disrupts performance, and established a rate-relief process if promised benefits are delayed.
A separate agreement with Canadian National would preserve access in affected markets by transferring Norfolk Southern’s shares of both the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis and Kansas City Terminal Railway to CN. All of this sits on top of a pledge that every employee holding a railroad union job at the time of approval will keep one for life.
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Taken together, the supplemental filing, CN agreement, and labor commitments show these companies are serious about improving railroad infrastructure and service while protecting rail industry stakeholders. They have made concrete commitments to enhance competition while creating a stronger alternative to trucking. The board’s job is to determine whether a proposed transaction serves the public interest under demanding modern merger review rules. To date, everything the board has asked for, the companies have provided.
The board should approve the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger with the strong, enforceable protections in place and let the country’s freight network finally catch up with the transcontinental vision Lincoln set in motion more than 150 years ago.
Chip Nottingham is a former chairman of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and former commissioner and CEO of the Virginia Department of Transportation. He was appointed to the STB by President George W. Bush.