Merging UP Settles Late-Trains Case With Amtrak

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Just a few days following Union Pacific’s announcement of its intent to merge with Norfolk Southern, Amtrak revealed it has settled with UP over its long-running late-trains proceeding and asked the Surface Transportation Board this afternoon to dismiss the case.

“Under the settlement that Amtrak has reached with Union Pacific in this matter, Union Pacific has made commitments regarding the Sunset Limited’s customer on-time performance and has further agreed to consequences if it does not meet those commitments,” Amtrak said this afternoon in a filing to the now-bulging STB docket (NOR_42175) in this proceeding.

Amtrak told the Board it was authorized to make the motion on behalf of all the named parties in the proceeding except CPKC, the newly merged Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern Railway, and asked the Board to dismiss the case “with prejudice” – a legal term which means that the case would be closed and could not be brought again.

It also means that while the settlement itself can probably be seen as a guide for handling future disputes, the STB will not really get a chance to rule on the overall merits of the case. After a half-century of the law – 49 U.S.C. § 24308(c) – being on the books, there will still be no precedent set for what it actually means when it says Class I hosts must give Amtrak “preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing.”

In its original 2022 complaint against UP at the Surface Transportation Board, Amtrak accused UP of “routinely” prioritizing freight trains over passenger trains, despite the long-standing legal requirement to give passenger trains preference. Whether resolving meets and passes, determining access to main lines, or otherwise failing to ensure that tracks are available for the scheduled and infrequent transit of Sunset Limited trains, UP is doing a “clearly substandard” and “abysmal” job, Amtrak said.

And once STB formally agreed to hear the case, Amtrak offered an even more damning -- and detailed -- complaint about UP's dispatching decisions, internal policies, and regular practices.

"If air traffic controllers regularly held passengers on the ground to allow cargo planes to take off first, or if trucking companies regularly stopped big rigs on main highways blocking automobile passengers from passing around them, or if cruise ship passengers regularly were denied access to port facilities by large cargo ships, no one would think such practices were acceptable. Yet, somehow, it has become not just accepted, but expected, that interference from freight trains regularly will cause delays to Amtrak passengers,” Amtrak told STB in 2024 opening statement. “That should end now."

Today's brief motion offered no such bluster. Evidently Amtrak is satisfied now that the terms of the settlement will address those dispatching issues, which were documented in great detail during the discovery portion of the proceeding.

“Union Pacific has also agreed that all Union Pacific personnel with any responsibility for Amtrak service will receive continuous training and education as part of a compliance program to understand their responsibilities to Amtrak under federal law,” Amtrak told the STB in its motion this afternoon. "Amtrak and Union Pacific have also agreed on a process by which they hope to certify a schedule for the Sunset Limited.”

The six-page motion offered little detail on the substance of those agreements leading to the settlement. For example, the motion said UP agreed to “consequences” if it doesn’t meet the on-time performance commitments it made but doesn’t describe the nature of those consequences.

On-time performance on the Sunset Limited actually improved as the proceeding unfolded, bolstering the evidence that late Amtrak trains were the result of a choice and not factors impossible for UP to control.

Your Association was invited to file a non-party reply to the docket in this case late last year, in which we argued that falling short of enforcing preference would thwart the will of 25 Congresses which have all kept that provision in place and written other passenger-rail provisions into law as well.