Union Pacific claims rival railroad delaying trains

Union Pacific has repeated its call for federal regulators to open an investigation into Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s operation of the Meridian Speedway, claiming that CPKC’s handling of UP-Norfolk Southern domestic intermodal trains has deteriorated.

In a letter to the Surface Transportation Board, UP said that dwell time for its eastbound intermodal “hotshot” has risen at the Shreveport, La., gateway since CPKC (NYSE: CP) reimposed an 8,500-foot train length restriction for traffic moving over the Meridian Speedway.

Prior to CP’s 2023 acquisition of Kansas City Southern, UP (NYSE: UNP) routinely handed 11,000-foot stack trains to KCS at Shreveport, which forwarded them on to NS (NYSE: NSC) at the Speedway’s eastern end at Meridian, Miss.

Only three passing sidings on the 320-mile Speedway can handle trains longer than 8,500 feet, which means westbound trains must hold in sidings to make way for UP’s overlength trains. CPKC Chief Executive Keith Creel has said that his railroad’s customers should not experience delays simply because UP and NS do not want to run their train to siding length.

“After CPKC initially imposed the 8,500-foot restriction on August 25, Union Pacific train dwell times increased from 3.5 hours to 12.5 hours. CPKC lifted the restriction on Sept. 27, and dwell times returned to normal,” UP said in its Feb. 6 filing. “However, CPKC reimposed the restriction on Nov. 17, and Union Pacific’s train dwell has once again increased to an average of 5.2 hours, with train dwell for the second train averaging 8.4 hours.”

But CPKC says the increased dwell reflects UP’s decision to operate 11,000-foot trains all the way to Shreveport, where they must be separated into shorter trains before entering the Speedway. CPKC also says the trains continue to run across the Speedway nearly three hours faster than required under contracts.

CPKC reimposed the train length restriction on Nov. 17 after hiring additional crews to handle a second section of the West Coast-Atlanta intermodal train.

A section is an additional train that operates as part of a single, scheduled train.

As part of its bid to acquire KCS, CP told regulators that it would continue to maintain service levels at existing gateways. “CPKC has not been meeting that commitment,” UP claims.

“CPKC’s failures have caused Union Pacific and its customers to suffer significant delays,” UP added. The railroad said that only an STB investigation could determine the full extent and causes of what it says is a decline in CPKC’s service.

CPKC disputes this and says it continues to operate trains in accordance with the Meridian Speedway agreement that NS and KCS signed in 2006. CPKC has a 70% stake in the joint venture, while NS holds the balance.

“UP’s letter is transparently designed to use Board processes to coerce a change in CPKC’s operating rules governing train length on the Meridian Speedway to further UP’s self-serving desire to send very long trains over infrastructure that was not built to accommodate them,” CPKC told the board in a filing.

“UP’s new grievances about dwell at Shreveport reflect nothing more than UP’s unhappiness with the fact that cannot bend MSLLC [Meridian Speedway LLC] to its will. Having decided that it will continue to run very long trains all the way to Shreveport for its own operating convenience, UP is upset that it must take some time shortening those trains before they can move east across the Speedway,” CPKC told the board. “Respectfully, that is UP’s problem, not a CP/KCS merger issue, and not an issue of ‘deteriorated service’ over the Speedway.

“The Board should decline UP’s request to intervene here.”

CPKC says the dwell figures UP reported to the STB reflect the work UP must do to shorten its trains in Shreveport. The dwell times, CPKC argues, say nothing about the level of CPKC service across the Speedway.

“UP makes much of the longer dwell experienced by UP’s ‘second train’ (i.e., the one created when UP’s overlength train is reduced in length). This dwell similarly does not reflect any CPKC service deterioration,” CPKC told the board. “To the contrary, it is fully explained by the fact that NS agreed with CPKC that the second eastbound NS haulage train would be scheduled to depart four hours and 40 minutes after the first. UP’s supposed ‘gotcha’ — reflected in ‘dwell’ of its second train that averaged 3.2 hours longer than that of the first train — in fact simply reflects the design UP’s interchange partner implemented to handle an additional eastbound train on the Speedway.”

CPKC’s response also provided data showing that CPKC “promptly and efficiently” handles the UP trains when it receives them. “CPKC almost always departed these trains well ahead of schedule … allowing UP’s customers to benefit from more-rapid-than-planned transit times,” CPKC said.

Last fall NS and UP asked the board to probe CPKC operations on the Meridian Speedway, which had bogged down for a period after CPKC on May 3 cut over to a new computer system in former KCS territory in the U.S.