Above photo: BNSF and Union Pacific trains meet at the Santa Fe Junction Flyover in Kansas City, Mo., in 2018. Steve Glischinski.
Not surprisingly, opponents of the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger remain unmoved by the two railroads’ latest regulatory filing addressing plans for their union.
BNSF CEO Katie Farmer and the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition have both issued statements reiterating their opposition in the wake of Monday’s UP-NS filing to address questions from the Surface Transportation Board about matters including competition, market share, and the impact of other mergers their deal might trigger.
Farmer, in a four-paragraph statement issued today (Tuesday, July 28), says that elements highlighted by UP and NS in Monday’s filing, including an expansion of their Committed Gateway Pricing proposal, “are more of the same — processes with multiple caveats that are difficult to understand, available to very few customers, and only available for very short periods of time. They do nothing meaningful to mitigate the massive anticompetitive impacts of 50% market share held by one company.”
The new version of Committed Gateway Pricing, she wrote, “would only be available to about 1% of rail shipments, would disappear after a few years and — as UP and NS’ application makes crystal clear — would actually raise rates for most of the shippers who ever use it.”
The supplemental information, Farmer contends, “does not change the fact that this would be an anti-competitive transaction between two financially healthy companies that will reduce competitive options and raise rates on rail customers, result in higher prices for consumers, and thus do great harm to the American economy and broader supply chain.”
UP and NS argue that opposition to the merger remains based in the competitive concerns of other railroads, a contention the two railroads’ CEOs reiterated today at the Trains Pro Future of Rail Symposium [see “CEOs of UP, NS say …,” Trains.com, July 28, 2026].
The Stop the Rail Merger Coalition — in a statement issued shortly after Monday’s 412-page UP-NS filing — said the latest filing was necessary because “regulators keep finding the same problem: This deal does not add up, no matter how it is packaged.”
The Coalition did not address any of the specifics of the latest filing, saying, “You cannot paper over a bad deal that fuels monopoly power by giving one company control over nearly half of the rail traffic in the U.S., raises costs on farmers and manufacturers, and puts thousands of rail jobs at risk.”
Chris Jahn, CEO of the American Chemistry Council, one of the shipper groups in the coalition, said, “the central flaw remains: Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have failed to demonstrate that this merger will enhance access to competitive rail service.” Mark Wallace, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and president of the Teamsters Rail Conference, said, “UP’s actions keep confirming our assessment that this merger is bad for workers, customers, and our communities.”
Still to comment is CPKC, another vocal opponent of the merger (and, like BNSF, part of the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition). But CEO Keith Creel may be waiting for his railroad’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, July 29, to address the matter.
