Merger filing portends Amtrak operating issues, precludes expanded service: Analysis

WASHINGTON — The Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger application filed with the Surface Transportation Board on Friday attempts to explain away adverse effects on passenger trains by vague promises of future “targeted infrastructure enhancements,” but generally doesn’t outline what those might be. In one case, a combined UP-NS proposes adding nine daily freights to a single-track route.

Following a series of maps explaining the creation of cross-country intermodal trains to bypass time-consuming terminal interchanges, a section of the massive filing addresses “Impacts on Passenger Operations.” (This begins on page 637 in Vol. 2 of the four-volume filing.) It begins with a patently false statement: “The UP/NS merger will not result in any adverse impact to passenger operations.”

That would only be true if the merged railroad promises to coordinate the new expedited intermodal moves with passenger train schedules, present and future. Instead, a review of each passenger route currently operated by either UP or Norfolk Southern is accompanied by the caveat that the merged system would “ensure compliance with existing passenger obligations.”

Choke points

While many routes would be affected by one or two more daily trains and some would see a decrease, the New York-New Orleans Crescent and the New Orleans-Los Angeles Sunset Limited appear to take big hits. The Crescent already has had its schedule lengthened at Norfolk Southern’s insistence without the new additions, purportedly to improve punctuality, but it suffers from a near-midnight Atlanta northbound departure that kills the train’s potential to carry Northeast travelers overnight. With stepped-up intermodal departures under the merger, the Crescent will face:

— Manassas-Lynchburg, Va.: two to three additional trains.
— Greensboro-Charlotte, N.C.: two to three additional trains (Eight Piedmonts share these tracks).
— Atlanta-Meridian, Miss.: nine to 10 additional trains.
— Meridian-New Orleans: three to four additional trains.

Much of the route between Atlanta and Meridian is a hilly, single-track railroad, with the added complication that major junctions at those endpoints are dispatched by either CSX or CPKC.

What about the Speedway?

Not acknowledged in the UP-NS filing is the Southern Rail Commission’s ongoing Corridor ID grant which studies extending a section of the Crescent from Meridian to Shreveport, La., on the joint CPKC-NS “Meridian Speedway;” Union Pacific from Shreveport to Marshall, Texas; then on the UP’s Texas Eagle route to Dallas.

The CPKC, as part of its successful merger application in 2021, said it would support passenger service on the Speedway. Judging from the numbers on both sides of Meridian, it appears that about six new intermodal trains will connect existing NS and UP lines between Meridian and Shreveport. The impact of these trains on the proposed passenger expansion across the Atlanta-Dallas I-20 corridor was not addressed, possibly because the merger’s sponsors assume any passenger expansion is off the table.

A daily Sunset Limited?

The proposal for a long-sought daily New Orleans-Los Angeles Sunset Limited was also not referenced. Depending upon the segment, the filing indicates the triweekly train will face two to six additional trains. The most additional traffic is on approximately 800 miles between West Colton, Calif., and El Paso, Texas, much of which UP has already double tracked.

In 2012, the railroad told then-Amtrak President Joseph Boardman that the company would have to pay $750 million for a daily Sunset without fully explaining why trains could run on time some days but not others without the improvements. During service challenges following the Southern Pacific merger in 1996 and from 2003 to 2005, the train suffered long delays in the Houston-Beaumont area.

History’s lessons

Rail Passengers Association President and CEO Jim Mathews was blunt in his preliminary assessment posted on RPA’s website.

“These assurances [that Amtrak trains won’t be impacted] come from two companies with well-documented histories of noncompliance with passenger on-time performance requirements, raising legitimate questions about enforceability,” Mathews wrote. “In short, the transaction appears designed to protect existing obligations rather than advance passenger rail expansion, leaving passengers and the public with limited upside and significant execution risk.”

When additional passenger train frequencies are proposed on any given route, the railroads almost always demand capacity improvements that would keep existing and future freight flowing. This is how Norfolk Southern was able to extract a state and federally financed infrastructure package for a second Harrisburg-Pittsburgh Pennsylvanian round trip, even though two passenger trains routinely traversed the multi-track thoroughfare each way for most of the Amtrak era.

Passing tracks were also added on NS’s busy Chicago-Porter, Ind., segment after a big meltdown there in 2016, but the railroad hasn’t allowed any more Michigan or Chicago-Cleveland Amtrak frequencies. Now it wants to field one or two more daily freights and says passenger trains won’t be affected.

Applying this reasoning, the Surface Transportation Board or transportation advocates might suggest that more intermodal trains would require specific improvements designed to protect existing and future passenger service. For the Sunset in particular, this would mean daily service and restoration of a route through and west of Phoenix as a condition of approving the transaction, since improving the train’s financial performance is in the public’s interest. If UP and NS wants more trains, shouldn’t they have to mitigate the impact on Amtrak and other operators?

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