The battle over the proposed merger of Union Pacific Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. came to Long Beach last week, as the CEOs of UP and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway presented sharply contrasting views of the impact that the deal will have on shippers.
UP’s Jim Vena and BNSF’s Katie Farmer took the stage in separate sessions at the Intermodal Association of North America’s 2026 Intermodal Expo to, respectively, defend and attack the bid to create the nation’s first end-to-end transcontinental railroad, spanning more than 50,000 miles across 43 states.
UP seeks to acquire NS in a deal valued at approximately $85 billion, including $20 billion in cash. The combined entity would be called the Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad. First announced in 2025, the proposal is currently before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which is expected to rule in 2027.
First on stage at the IANA Expo to address the merger was BNSF president and chief executive officer Katie Farmer. In a conversation with IANA president and CEO Anne Reinke, she blasted the proposal as anti-competitive, noting that it will result in the concentration of half of all U.S. Class 1 rail freight traffic with a single company. “If this merger goes through,” she said, “it’s going to create a competitive dynamic that’s not sustainable.”
BNSF’s previous statements against the merger have called it “unprecedented in scale,” one that “could reshape the industry in ways that limit customer options.”
Farmer said the better path to serving North American shippers is through “collaboration” between independent railroads. BNSF currently teams with CSX Corp. to provide coast-to-coast domestic intermodal service. It further extends its network through ties with regional short lines. But BNSF is itself the product of multiple mergers over the years, including between Burlington Northern Inc. and Santa Fe Pacific Corp. in 1995. As things stand, it’s the largest freight railroad in North America, operating more than 32,500 miles of track. UP (without NS) is a close second, with a network more than 32,000 miles.
Farmer is skeptical of UP’s promise to keep certain key gateways open to competition when operating as a transcontinental carrier. She claimed that Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. failed to honor a similar pledge when it acquired Kansas City Southern in 2023, effectively blocking BNSF’s access to Mexico over the Laredo, Texas crossing.
She was also dubious about UP’s claim that the merger will siphon a significant amount of intermodal traffic away from trucks due to operating efficiencies. “The fact is that in the last few years of mergers, rail market share has declined,” she said. The reason, she added, was the rail industry’s “lack of responsiveness” to shipper demands for reasonable rates and reliable service.
UP’s Vena followed Farmer with a solo presentation, in which he defended the merger as the answer to a “disjointed” national rail network. Countering criticisms about the financial aspects of the deal, he said UP can well afford the $85 billion stock-and-cash offer. As for an anticipated $2.5 billion breakup fee should the deal fall through, “we’ve got more than that sitting in the bank.”
A combined UP and NS will result in huge efficiencies, removing up to two days’ transit time at major transfer points, Vena asserted. In Chicago, for example, the UP and NS rail ramps are between three and 20 miles apart, depending on terminal pairings, and domestic containers must be trucked between them under the current arrangement. With a merged system, Vena said, “it’s a block swap from one train to another, with no offloading.”
In defending the deal, UP and NS have argued that there’s virtually no overlap between their current systems, thus no need to shut down long lengths of redundant track. “The vision for the combined company is all about growth through new routes and better service for customers,” they say.
In Long Beach, Vena further defended the merger by arguing that it won’t lead to the huge loss of union jobs that critics predict. “Union employees on the day of the merger will have a job for life,” he vowed, with much of the resulting attrition and layoffs occurring at the management level, and overall employment levels actually rising as the merged entity attracts new business. “Further up the corporate hierarchy you go, duplication is going to be a problem,” he acknowledged, while insisting that “we want to keep our smart people on.”
Vena provided his own history lesson about the dynamics of rail partnerships in recalling that Canadian Pacific Kansas City earlier this year forced UP to cut down an 11,000-foot domestic intermodal train to just 8,500 feet at the Shreveport, Louisiana gateway, causing transit delays of up to 12 hours.
Vena challenged the concessions that other railroads are demanding in the form of extensive trackage rights over the combined UP-NS system. “The laundry list of things people have asked for is an impossible list,” he said. “Bottom line is, we’re going to provide a better product: one train all the way from the East to the West.”
