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December 2025
By Julie Sneider, Senior Editor
Thanks to the proposed merger between Union Pacific Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railway, 2026 will be a monumental year for the entire rail industry. The Surface Transportation Board will evaluate the Class Is’ application calling for the creation of the nation’s first coast-to-coast transcontinental railroad.
If the merger ultimately wins the STB’s stamp of approval, it will have a profound impact on Amtrak, the only nationwide rail network that carries passengers from coast to coast and into parts of Canada. About 97% of the 21,000 route miles traveled by Amtrak trains are on track owned by the Class Is and some smaller, private regional or commuter railroads.
Among those other railroads, the UP and NS networks combined host 25 of Amtrak’s 44 state-sponsored and long-distance routes, according to the Rail Passengers Association (RPA). In 2024, those Class Is hosted Amtrak trains carrying 11.3 million passengers, or 63% of Amtrak’s state- and long-distance ridership that year.
As of press time, UP and NS had yet to file their application with the STB outlining their vision for how their combined operations would play out. Still, there’s little doubt that Amtrak executives and legal advisers have been formulating how to position the national intercity passenger railroad so that it can continue transporting riders with as little merger-related disruptions as possible.
Ultimately, Amtrak officials’ conclusions on what the merger will mean for its millions of passengers will carry a lot of weight with the STB.
According to former STB Chairman Roger Nober, Amtrak — and passenger rail in general — will be one of four key stakeholders the board members will consider when they weigh whether the merger is in the public’s interests. The other three key stakeholders are shippers, labor unions and communities, he says.
Nober, who served as STB chairman under President George W. Bush’s administration, believes Amtrak and key commuter railroads — especially Chicago’s Metra — may seek to restructure their host-track relationships with UP and NS prior to the STB’s final decision. The issues that Amtrak and other passenger railroads will want settled prior to the merger’s closing would include payment and other terms of their use of freight-rail track, infrastructure investment, and the potential for increasing passenger-rail service on the hosts’ rail lines, Nober believes.
“When else will [the railroads] have a chance to address their concerns? The merger being a voluntary transaction gives passenger railroads at least a chance to revisit their relationship with the freight railroads,” he says.
Nober would be surprised if Amtrak doesn’t seize that opportunity and suspects conversations with UP and NS may already be taking place, he adds. Typically, the STB encourages private-sector agreements whenever possible before the board’s intervention is requested.
One key issue that Amtrak no doubt will want to address is on-time performance (OTP) of its trains traveling on UP and NS tracks. Although federal law requires freight railroads to provide Amtrak trains preference over freight trains — Amtrak even pays a financial incentive for them to do so — the hosts sometimes make passenger trains wait for freight trains to pass. As a result, Amtrak’s ongoing relationship with UP and NS as host railroads is likely to be a matter the STB will want to closely examine.
Per federal rules, at least 80% of passengers on an Amtrak route must arrive at their destination on time, meaning within 15 minutes of the route’s published schedule. If the OTP standard isn’t met over a set period of time, Amtrak, passengers or other stakeholders can file a complaint with the STB, which has the authority to investigate.
The OTP of Amtrak trains came up during the STB’s most recent Class I merger case — Canadian Pacific’s acquisition of Kansas City Southern in March 2023. In that situation, the STB required CP to follow through with commitments it made to Amtrak, including supporting Amtrak’s passenger-rail expansion plans, as well as improving rail infrastructure to support those plans. In its decision, the STB also took note that CP had one of the best OTP records in the industry, and as a result won Amtrak’s endorsement of the merger.
Since then, Canadian Pacific Kansas City has maintained its status as the best Class I for meeting its OTP obligations with Amtrak. Last year, Amtrak recognized CPKC for the ninth consecutive year of earning top marks on its annual report card that grades host railroads’ treatment of Amtrak trains. CPKC was the only Class I in 2024 to earn an “A” grade by ensuring most Amtrak passengers arrived at their destinations on time when traveling along CPKC lines.
In last place on the 2024 report card? UP, which earned a “B-” grade, signifying that passengers on some routes arrived late, although Amtrak did note on the card that UP was the “most improved” host railroad in 2024. NS, meanwhile, earned a “B+.”
To be fair, CPKC hosts Amtrak trains over far fewer miles than UP or NS alone. Still, in a sign that UP and NS are trying to smooth over Amtrak’s OTP concerns ahead of the merger, they recently resolved two disputes involving late-running Amtrak trains on their lines. In late July, Amtrak and UP announced they had settled a lengthy case involving late-running trains on Amtrak’s Sunset Limited route.
In December 2022, Amtrak asked the STB to investigate the causes of poor OTP on the route, which runs between New Orleans and Los Angeles and stops at 20 intermediate stations. Although details of their negotiated settlement weren’t revealed, UP “is committed to improving customer on-time performance for the Sunset Limited, as well as continuous training and education for employees with responsibilities to Amtrak under federal law,” Amtrak officials said in a prepared statement.
And in September, the U.S. Department of Justice dismissed a case it had filed in July 2024 against NS after the Class I agreed to resolve allegations that it had delayed Amtrak trains on the Crescent route, which runs between New York City and New Orleans. NS controls 1,140 miles of that 1,377-mile route.
As part of the settlement with DOJ, NS agreed to provide all Amtrak trains the highest priority; instruct NS employees to give priority to Amtrak trains; require supervisor approval for any dispatching decision that doesn’t give priority to Amtrak trains in nonemergency situations; and provide records about Amtrak train delays on the Crescent route.
In an interview in mid-October, Amtrak President Roger Harris said the railroad will seek similar assurances in the UP-NS marriage that it sought in the CPKC merger: that UP and NS commit to maintaining OTP of Amtrak trains, the upgrade of rail infrastructure where necessary and an openness to Amtrak expansion plans that involve UP and NS track.
For now, Amtrak is already noting improvements in OTP since the UP and NS settlements, according to Harris.
“In both cases, we’ve seen really good on-time performance,” he says.
And, Harris believes there’s an opportunity for a better relationship with all the Class Is.
“Amtrak has been around for over 50 years, and I always think it’s good to sit down [with the Class Is] to talk about what works and what doesn’t work and have a very open conversation,” he says. “I think it’s about solving problems rather than finding them.”
A willingness to work productively with Amtrak on mutual issues of interest rather than on historic points of friction between Amtrak and the host freight railroads is something that Harris hopes is included in the UP-NS merger application.
“The question is really about the overall picture of how we work together,” he says. “I don’t think that we’ve really found the magic formula yet, but that’s where the focus is: How do we work together and are there ways to reduce where the friction is?”
As to why CPKC consistently earns an “A” as a host railroad, Harris says it boils down to communication and a commitment from top management to ensure that the Class I maintains a good relationship with Amtrak.
As an example of CPKC’s follow-through on its agreements post-merger, the Class I was helpful in the May 2024 launch of the Borealis route between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota, with a stop in Milwaukee and other cities along the Mississippi River. One of Amtrak’s newest routes, the Borealis operates along CPKC track and topped over 205,000 passengers in its first year.
“The Borealis is the beneficiary of the very good relationship we have with CPKC,” Harris says, adding that the Class I allowed Amtrak to launch the service even before completing a tie replacement project along the rail line.
Meanwhile, Harris touts Amtrak’s success in fiscal-year 2025, which ended on Sept. 30 with record ridership. Amtrak posted adjusted ticket revenue of $2.7 billion — a first in Amtrak’s history and 10.4% higher year-over-year.
Adding to that enrollment boost was the new Mardi Gras route between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. Launched in August, the route represents the first time Amtrak trains have traveled along the Gulf Coast in 20 years.
“The Mardi Gras has been a huge success. We had over 18,000 customers in the first month, significantly over our expectations,” Harris says. “We had sellout conditions on certain days, and we’ve been able to schedule additional capacity as well because there’s been so much demand.”
In FY2025, Amtrak logged record ridership of 34.5 million customer trips, a 5.1% increase over FY2024 and an all-time record for the second consecutive year. Prior to this year and last, the railroad’s highest ridership was recorded in 2019 at 32.5 million customer trips.
“I think it’s really exciting that we continue to grow,” says Harris, adding that last year’s ridership gains occurred on all three business lines: the Northeast Corridor, long-distance service and state-supported routes.
It’s not just its ridership and ticket revenue in which Amtrak logged growth in FY2025: Total operating revenue surged 9.1% to $3.9 billion. The railroad posted an annual operating loss of $598.4 million, which was a 15.1% improvement over FY2024, placing the railroad on track to reach operational profitability by FY2028.
Additionally, capital investments in major projects and state-of-good-repair initiatives hit a record $5.5 billion, a 25% increase over FY2024 and about 400% greater than prior to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021, the surface transportation bill. The IIJA contained an unprecedented $22 billion in supplemental funding for Amtrak, plus billions more that the railroad was eligible for via grant programs.
With the IIJA money now coming in, Amtrak is making progress on crucial capital projects, including the East River Tunnel rehabilitation, replacement of the Connecticut River Bridge and the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, as well as over $1 billion on state-of-good-repair projects.
Its record ridership and revenue notwithstanding, Amtrak will be a stakeholder to contend with in the UP-NS merger proposal, asserts RPA President and CEO Jim Mathews.
“They have a very strong position regardless of whether they had a good year or a bad year because they are the national operator of passenger-rail service. They still carry 63% of all passenger-rail ridership,” Mathews says. “But yeah, it’s always better when Amtrak has a good year. It gives them credibility and the ability to stand alongside the other Class Is.”
Once UP and NS file their merger application with the STB, Amtrak officials should make sure it’s complete and addresses any potential harm that could occur to existing or future Amtrak routes, he believes.
One issue that RPA is keeping an eye on is whether conditions that NS signed up for in its DOJ settlement will flow through to the merged entity.
“[NS] more or less promised to run the Crescent route like a Z train — which is astonishing in itself,” Mathews says, referring to a fast and highest-priority freight service. “That was their deal with the Justice Department and then they were going to do some training of their employees [about passenger-train priority] and they were going to certify to the Justice Department every year that they were still following that rule. We want to make sure that stays in there after the merger.”
The STB is very likely to designate Amtrak as an interested party to the UP-NS merger application, he says. To that end, his association along with three other passenger-rail transportation advocacy organizations in mid-November submitted joint comments to the STB on the proposed merger. They emphasize the dramatic impact the largest railroad merger ever in the nation’s history would have on tens of millions of Amtrak and other passenger-rail riders in the country, as well as the towns and cities through which those trains travel.
In their comments, officials from the RPA, Southern Rail Commission, Environmental Law and Policy Center and Transportation for America urged the STB to hold public hearings early in the application review process so that passenger-rail riders and advocates have a chance to speak up for their interests in the merger case.
At a minimum, Amtrak will be seeking the same assurances in the UP-NS merger case that it sought under the CP-KCS merger plan: preference for its trains to maintain on-time performance; an openness toward passenger-rail expansion; and support for necessary rail infrastructure improvements. A merged UP-NS won’t be expected to approve or absorb the costs of every new passenger-rail expansion that’s proposed, just where it makes sense, says Mathews.
“But let’s just have good-faith conversations about it,” he adds. “Do not just obstruct it reflexively. ... UP and Norfolk Southern together are almost all of the existing passenger network. It’s a huge share. So that would be an entity that, by itself, will be able to stop growth in the United States if they feel like it.”
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