Post by J. Vann Cunningham

The Surface Transportation Board today issued Decision No. 21, accepting the UP-NS merger application as complete while holding the merits stage in abeyance pending substantial supplemental information. My Letter of Comment in STB Docket No. FD 36873, filed May 8, 2026, identified six substantive deficiencies in the revised application. The Board's mandatory supplemental directives track five of those six issues in substance, and my comments were cited by name in the decision's most consequential analytical section, alongside submissions from BNSF, CN, CSXT, and NGFA. In proceedings of this scale and institutional complexity, the alignment between an independent practitioner's analysis and the Board's formal evidentiary requirements is the outcome that the comment process is designed to produce, and rarely does.