The Coalition Against The $85 Billion Railroad Is Getting Crowded

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have a fortnight to go before the Surface Transportation Board's first public input deadline, and the list of people lining up against America's first transcontinental railroad keeps growing.

More than 100 congressional Democrats, led by Representative Valerie Hoyle, have written to the board urging rigorous scrutiny of the merger's effects on jobs, worker rights and safety. Attorneys general from Montana, Iowa, Kansas, Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota and Tennessee have filed against it, a bench notable for including states where the politics of the railroads have never been partisan. The Teamsters Rail Conference has warned of job losses. Community coalitions have produced maps showing where traffic would concentrate, with projections of 300 to 400 per cent increases in some corridors, California's Inland Empire among them.

The railroads' answer is arithmetic. Their filing claims 88,000 new single-line county-to-county lanes, supply chain reductions of 24 to 48 hours, a billion dollars in annual operating savings and $3.5 billion a year in customer savings from shifting 2.1 million truckloads off the highway. Chief executive Jim Vena describes an unprecedented volume of evidence. They have also added commitments designed to blunt the competition argument: open gateways, committed gateway pricing, new access rights for Canadian National between St Louis and Kansas City, and job guarantees for unionised staff.

The gap between those positions is not really about the numbers. The railroads are arguing national efficiency. The opposition is arguing local consequence, and the STB's own precedent gives local consequence standing.

Public input closes on 30 September, with a further comment deadline in November. A final decision is not expected until late 2027.