Union Pacific (UP) and Norfolk Southern (NSC) submitted their application to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) on Friday , requesting approval to merge the two U.S. railroads.
The application, nearly seven thousand pages long, includes a record two thousand letters of support from stakeholders, joining shareholders of both companies who cast 99% of their votes in favor of the merger.
“We look forward to working with the Board as it reviews our historic application to create America’s first transcontinental railroad. As time and technology continue to transform how goods are delivered, our industry must keep pace and move forward, reaching underserved markets with new rail solutions and strengthening America’s supply chain,” said Jim Vena, CEO of UP.
He noted that this merger will connect the United States from coast to coast , transforming 10,000 existing interline service routes into a faster and more efficient single-line service, eliminating time-consuming transfers between railroads.
It will also eliminate approximately 2,400 railcars and containers and 60,000 rail-miles each day, competing more effectively with long-distance road transport, converting about two million road freight loads to rail annually.
In addition, it will provide one-way access to more than 100 ports connecting to global markets and 10 international gateways to markets in Canada and Mexico.
“ This combination will bring together UP’s extensive western reach and NS’s unmatched access to the East’s manufacturing and population centers in an end-to-end combination. It will create a coherent freight rail solution with 50,000 miles of routes connecting 43 states and more than 100 ports,” said Mark George, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern.
Following this announcement, Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) announced that it formally received the UP-NS merger request and will review it thoroughly in the coming days.
“We will examine the application from at least two perspectives: whether it complies with the Board’s 2001 Major Merger Rules and whether it provides the STB and stakeholders with an adequate basis for assessing the public interest consequences of the proposed UP-NS merger,” he said.
He mentioned that the first step in the STB’s merger review process is to determine, before January 18, 2026, whether to accept the application for consideration or reject it as incomplete.
“If approved, the merger would pose extraordinary and far-reaching risks to customers, rail employees, and supply chains in general. We are confident that the STB will conduct a rigorous process to assess all the short- and long-term impacts on the public interest of this proposed behemoth, including the competition that rail customers face today,” he said.
Meanwhile, Katie Farmer, president and CEO of BNSF , commented that they are reviewing the STB’s presentation, although she clarified that “so far, BNSF’s opposition to the proposed merger remains unchanged.”
“The transaction poses a significant threat to the American economy and consumers due to its long-term competitive disadvantages. It would leave carriers with fewer options, leading to higher fares and ultimately higher prices for consumers. This did not begin with customers calling for this merger, and the claimed public benefits appear to accrue primarily to shareholders. Past mergers demonstrate the risk of serious service disruptions with destructive impacts on customers, the rail network, and the nation’s economy,” he said.
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