Latest news with #UnionPacific
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Union Pacific battery-electric hybrid locomotive completes testing
One year after the rollout, Union Pacific is ready to deploy a hybrid battery-electric switching locomotive in a working rail environment. The Class I railroad (NYSE: UNP) and project partner ZTR Control Systems recently wrapped up testing of the first unit of a planned roster of six hybrid locomotives at UP's Jenks Locomotive Shop in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The next assignment for the engine, numbered Y409, will be further testing in a yet-to-be-identified rail yard. The first-of-their-kind hybrids for the North American rail freight business were rolled out in April 2024. Like hybrid autos, the locomotives can be powered by a standard diesel engine prime mover or stored battery power, with the battery recharging during engine operation. UP said in a video release that, depending on mode of operation, the hybrid switchers are expected to consume up to 80% less fuel than conventional diesels. Railroads are testing a variety of alternative-fuel locomotives, powered by batteries, liquefied natural gas and hydrogen. But development has been gradual, as they have yet to replace the cheap and abundant power of diesel fuel. There are also no federal standards for alternative fuel power and little off-the-shelf technology designed for railroad applications. The hybrid power runs in a mother-slug pair, with the prime mover in the mother unit and the slug providing extra horsepower and braking controlled by the mother. The propulsion system was designed by ZTR of Minneapolis, while Union Pacific built the prototype at North Little Rock. Testing on the next locomotive in the group is expected to begin in 2026. Subscribe to FreightWaves' Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox. Find more articles by Stuart Chirls joins railcar builder Greenbrier as chief commercial officer Norfolk Southern expands short line interchange improvement program Rail agenda steams up as short lines blitz Congress The post Union Pacific battery-electric hybrid locomotive completes testing appeared first on FreightWaves.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CSX CEO: The US economy is growing, but slowly
You can catch Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. There is arguably no better economic indicator than following demand trends from the largest railroad operators in the United States. Railroads, such as Warren Buffett-owned Burlington Northern and rivals Union Pacific (UNP) and CSX (CSX), haul everything from car parts to steel to coal to food. Therefore, whether the economy is doing badly or well is often captured in the top and bottom lines of railroads, more so than in wonky, backward-looking economic data from the government. With tariffs from the Trump administration starting to weigh on the economy, investors would be wise to check in on railroad operating performance. That's just what the Yahoo team has done. Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi sits down on the Opening Bid podcast with CSX Corp.'s Joe Hinrichs to discuss current business trends amid the Trump tariff war. Hinrichs has a very unique view of the tariff situation, as he was a long-time top executive at Ford tasked with running its global operations. Are railroads predicting a recession? Does Trump's 'Made in America' focus spell opportunity for railroads long-term? Sozzi and Hinrichs dig in! Welcome to a new episode of the opening bid podcast. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Zazi. Like I always say this, the podcast that will make you a smarter investor, period. And of course opening bid sponsored by our friends in Vanguard, and we're bringing you this episode, uh, from the big beautiful NASDAQ in Times Square. Special, real special guest here today, CSX, uh, President CEO Joe Henris, Joe, good to see you. Last time I think I saw you was when you were running the ship or operations at Ford way back when and now.I think we look the same, but yeah, well, you know my hair is a little grayer, but you look good. You look good. You all hairspray, but good to see you here, of course, now you're in CSX got here what in September 2022. That's right. So I know a lot about railroads. I think I do. I don't know as much as about railroads as you do. Levels set for investors. What what is, what is CSX today and what do the operations look like? Sure, I mean, CSX is the largest revenue railroad in East Mississippi, basically the way theRailroads are set up in America. There's two Class One railroads in the West, BNSF and Union Pacific, and two in the east, Norfolk Southern and CSX. We're the largest in the east. Basically, the way we're set up is the Mississippi River is mostly dividing line, so the interchange points happen in Chicago, Memphis, you know, New Orleans, East St. Louis, um, and so we operate in the 26 states east of Mississippi, 2/3 of the US $14.5 billion of revenue, but importantly, a good, you know, all the things you take for granted, all of us take for granted every day wouldn't move without the railroads. This hadto be a no brainer, but you had to have had some knowledge of the railroads while you were working at Ford. Don't we ship auto parts across this country ontrains? Yeah, we do, especially automobiles for sure. Actually, my second job at Ford Motor Company was running material planning logistics worldwide, which included all scheduling, you know, inventory, which of course included the railroads. I got to know the railroad CEOs got because we spent billions of dollars on moving automobiles and parts. It's interesting because now pretty much the only thing that moves on rail are finished vehicles. Um, those auto parts now are pretty much all trucked except for from Mexico perhaps up to the Midwest. that's something that's interesting that's changed over time. We can talk about that, yeah, I got to know the rails and a matter of fact, in 2003, I was invited by Norfolk Southern, now our competitor, to speak to their board of directors about auto business and rail and how we could help get better. So it's fascinating how the world turns. Norfolk Southern didn't know who they had in the building. Iwhat's going on there? Yeah, well, it was, you know, 20 years in the making, but we're, you know, we're, we're in there. What is the um what is an operations person such as yourself, you know, I think back to what you were working on at Ford helped launch many vehicles around the world now that you've settled into CSX a couple of years in, what operationally have you been working on? Yeah, I mean, the thing about railroads is it's all about operational discipline and process. You think about to closed have all these yards. You're taking in all these containers and all these cars from all over the place, and you have to have discipline to run the processes because if the yards get jammed up, if trains don't run on time, as we say, as we all say in our society, then everything gets ingested and what is so critical to orchestrate the locomotives, the engineers and conductors who actually run the trains, and then all the cars and building the cons system, etc. so so much operational process discipline is importantly, you know, we have 14 unions. It's, you know, we're 198 years old. There's a lot of complexity to the management union relationship and the labor part of this because 90% of our employees are unionized, which of course goes back to my experience in the automobile industry as well. What you know you have under contracts with the labor unions like what what were those negotiations? We do matter of fact, they are 5 year contracts. They just they were just coming due at the end of we took a historically new approach to this last summer. We actually said, why don't we try to do this early because historically they've been very acrimonious. They always wait till last minute. Last time around took 3 years to get a deal, so we're 3 years into 5 years and ended up going to Congress to get voted on to not allow them to strike to enforce a deal that the presidential emergency board recommended to the company and the unions. That's how complicated these relationships have been over the so 14 unions, 16 different agreements, we're all, we're down to one, down to 1 now. We have them all done. We had half of them done early, which had never been happened before, and that's trying to change the culture and change the relationship of the railroad industry so that we can get better our customers, ultimately be more be more efficient and safe as well. Railroading, uh, I guess I don't have to tell you this. It is a hard gig. So what, what do you have to put in these new contracts to help support theseworkers? The hardest thing about the railroad industry is actually it's an outdoor sport, and Mother Nature isn't always kind to us. Uh of fact, the hurricanes last year really hurt our network, but what you put in the contracts really is just the opportunity to work together and what's important to employees, of course, their, their, their scheduling and their work-life balance because we're a 7 day operation, 12 hours a day. We don't take the holidays off. I mean the railroads never stop. And so how do you orchestrate schedules and orchestrate a process that is, that can, you know, help people with their want to be more efficient, but obviously you want to earn a fair wage as well and be well compensated, so you try to work all together, but you really want to work together to serve the customer because railroads historically the last couple of decades have not grown volume. Coal volumes have declined. Other motal volume has increased, but generally speaking, not a lot of growth because the service levels weren't really that good when I was at Ford when I was president of Ford Motor Company. We're moving away from rail get better service from trucks, but our challenge to our team is how do we work together to provide better service to customers so we can grow because better for everyone in society if we do more work on the rails. It's safer, takes trucks off the roads, a lot of congestion. The taxpayers pay for the roads. We pay for our own infrastructure, so it's better for all of us as taxpayers. It's also frankly, more efficient and better for the environment. I want to get into what maybe some signals that I think your business or may or may not be sending right now from an economic standpoint, but what is the future of railroading look like in this country? Uh, does the next generation, if you're 15 years old right now, do they want to be working on a railroad? Well, there are, there are those um fans out there, trust me, we see them everywhere we go who I just love trains and, and, and love the industry, but you know, to the know, working with your hands, outdoor sports, 7 day operation, these are the types of operations that more challenge to get people there'slike a historical truck trucker shortage. I've been hearingabout this or mechanics and you know technicians and automobile dealerships right for service. These are types of jobs that over know, our younger generations have moved away from it. We need to get them back in because they're six figure jobs and good benefits. Our business actually still has a pension, so I, if I wanted to work at CSX, I can earn 6 figures. Yes, right out right from the start, once you're trained, takes a little while to get trained, but with a pension and with all kinds of great benefits. But, but you're also gonna have, you know, a 7 day operation, you know, 24 hours a day. You're going to be some challenges when sometimes with some of the holidays and things. So there are trade-offs, but importantly,We need to get people back in love with railroads again because because what we have in North America is a gift. I mean it happened because of how we grew as a nation, but our freight rail system in North America is the envy of the rest of the world. We have the best freight rail network in the world. Now others have better passenger rail systems than we do, right? China, Japan, Europe, but we focused as a growing nation go east from east to west, and the railroads made that happen, so we still have that andSo getting that capacity, using it efficiently, safely, better for the environment is what we're all trying to do. Youever ride the New Jersey Transit? What a dog. I have not. I have not ridden. We don't do passenger trains. Don't sendthis guy comments. It has nothing to do with the New Jersey. Amtrak, right? Amtrak. No, we don't obviously Amtrak is run independently. However,That's part of the challenge of all this because Amtrak runs on our on our rail network. It's a private network. We control it. We keep it up. We spend the money to all the $2 billion a year just keeping our network up and running and safe, but Amtrak is allowed to run on our tracks as well as the other Class One railroads. So that that forced marriage relationship is an interesting one foryou. All right, so you heard it. Poor Joe has nothing to do with New Jersey Transit and everything going on there and Amtrak. Thankfully they settled. Yeah, we'll take that offline. So let me ask you about there's so much going now tariffs. There's a push by the administration to build more stuff in the US. What is the view of the economy from a freightbusiness like CS? Yeah, because one of the cool things about being a railroad is we see the economy, you know, all we are. I mean, I think even Warren Buffett once said if he could only have one source of data, he was on an island somewhere he wants the rail shipping data because we're an early indicator. So what we're seeing interest rate sensitive parts of the economy, autos, not reaching their potential, let's say it that way. Um, you know, autos are still in the 1516 million SA and we were 17 million SAR 4 years before COVID, right? Um, housing is, you know, we all know about the housing situation, so definitely interest rate sensitive parts of the business. Um, having said development in our part of the country, Midwest, Southeast is booming. We have 600 projects right now that we're working on in our network to bring new businesses onto our network over the next several years. We had 37 that started this year, gone into production this year already, so that's exciting. That's part of this whole tariffs, you know, post-COVID realization of how we should have our supply chains, but also obviously the stuff going we think of bubbles coming through because of all the trade tariff things on the ports in Port Cliff they call it, yeah, I mean what happened was we had a bunch of stuff come in early and now we've got a 90 day pause. Some more stuff's coming, but there was a gap there so freight vessels, you know, declined across the waters for a little bit. Who knows where it goes, but of course when that hits the ports in big numbers, it can cause congestion. So we're watching that very carefully. But the rest of the economy when it comes toAggregates and minerals like construction is still is still strong, right? Grain harvest was good this year. Coal export coal's volumes are strong. Coal business is good. So there are parts of the economy that are good, but, but obviously we're feeling the pressure on some of the interest rate sensitiveparts. The merchandise inside of your trains um that you transport, is it if it's a car, it's food, whatever it is, is it inflationary? Well, not when it's on a railroad, so the transportation piece isn't inflationary because we're lower cost than trucks and a lot more efficient. But having said that, um, you know, if more and more things come to the United States, which would be great for our business and great for for jobs, depending on what it is, it could be inflationary, right? I mean, because it was made today in Mexico or China, be more cost to produce here, but logistics costs will go down. So you have to look at the total cost equation, far as our contribution to this, we're getting more efficient, you know, and you know, while we do have some pricing that happens every year, you know, normally a little bit above inflation, um, you know, we can be more efficient and help and help with this equation. All right, hang with us, Jared. We're going to go off for a quick break. We'll be right back on opening right, welcome back to opening bid here at the NASDAQ in Times Square. Of course, opening bid sponsored by our friends, uh, at Vanguard, having a great chat here with CSX president CEO Joe Henris. Um, you know, we're talking about the state of the economy as seen through the, the eyes of a railroad. Is this economy still one that is growing? Is it growing strongly? Is it growing slower? Is it a recession? How would you characterize it? Well, we see volume growth this year, um, still low single digits, so, so with anything that you would, you know, that was the guy that you put on in April. It is, um, so we still see growth. Some of that, a lot of that's coming from what we would call bulk train business grain, coal, some of that aggregates construction related. We see lots of potential but not yet realized yet in autos, um, and some others, metals, you know, steel and aluminum have been depressed for the last couple of way I would characterize it is this the service economy has been strong, continues to be strong. The industrial economy has been in a recession for the last couple of years, and we're more tied to the industrial economy because of all the, you know, materials, raw materials being removed and finished things being produced. So if we can see more industrial growth, production growth, that would be a big deal to the economy and for CSX and to the railroads as well. But right now that's been pretty stagnant. It's not as bad as it was the last couple of years. That's a big potential we still see a little bit of growth. A lot of that is intermodal traffic, so containers moving across the country, whether coming into the ports or just moving in. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's a booming economy, but it's certainly growing. It's not in a recession, at least in the demand data we see. Every week we look at our order fill requests, so the demand coming in from our customers, and we don't see a decline, not big growth, we don't see a decline either is up structurally to handle bringing jobs back to America. What would that mean to a rail suchas CS? Well, it'd be great for us because you know a lot of times when these companies want to build new manufacturing facilities or build any facilities, they want access to rail because it's lower cost, better for the environment, more efficient and safer. So that's good while we have 600 projects underway on our network right but what do they normally look for? They look for power, manpower, so, so electricity and utilities, um, you know, human resources, land and access to logistics, and you know those are the main things they're looking for which we which we can help and we're a big part of that industrial and economic development for states, um, but do we have the workers? I mean, you know, one of the challenges that we are gonna have I think in the future and we're all talking about immigration is down significantly, which, you know, obviously all the work going on in the southern border has been great, how do we make sure we have the workers for the future as well? We're not having enough babies in this country if you read all the articles, and so, uh, I have enough babies. Yeah, I'm, I'm beyond that point, you know, I had, we had 3 and we're blessed, but, but, but importantly, do we have the human resources to do that and how do we manage that going forward as some of that work, uh, has spent really before CSX decades in the auto industry, how hard is it to build an auto plant?I think that is something getting lost in this trade discussion that a Ford or GM can take a plant that is in Canada or Mexico and poof, flip a switch and they're making cars in a year. the way on the ground, yeah, yeah, actually I was in when I was in for 3 years I was running China and Asia Pacific. We built 10 plants in in in that takes 5+ years. If you think about Ford's been building a plant outside Memphis, Tennessee for a number of years. The Hyundai plant just opened in Savannah, outside Savannah, that was announced in 2019 and just opened in early 2025, so you can kind of get a feel for the time frame. Now the supplier plants can open much more, much sooner than that. The vehicle plants are huge and they take a lot of time, but you're talking 5 years, roughly, give or make that happen now thankfully the administration is working hard to make sure the patent, the, the permit process and everything is easier and better and more efficient that can help because permitting can be a big part of this. You have to have, you have to find the land. All those things are part of that. So if you have all that lined up, you can go faster, but still you're talking 4 to 5 years. Yeah, so it's not overnight. This is not overnight, but there is capacity already the US, so there are a number of manufacturers who have plants running on one shift or two shifts where they could go to 2 or 3 shifts, for example, you're seeing that some of the announcements have already come out. GM has announced to increase production at a truck plant in Indiana. I mean, Ford just recently added a shift to their plant in Wayne, Michigan. So there's things happening to add, you know, use existing capacity and make more the US, which ultimately good for CSX actually because we move a lot of those finished vehicles. Whatadvice would you give to your fellow CEOs trying to navigate all this uncertainty? Well, you know, businesses don't like uncertainty, as you know, and so obviously having resiliency is important, but you need you need a scenario plan. You need to look at different scenarios, say what if this happens, what do we do? This happens, what do we do? And you need to basically just keep running the fundamentals well because at the end of the day, the most efficient, the best quality, you know, the best run businesses will not only survive but environment, but you need to be opportunistic, you know, because things are changing pretty regularly, right? I mean we have the tariffs and they came off 90 days and etc. so you really have to be nimble and you have to really be looking at things every day and respond accordingly. This has this caused any operational headaches for CSX? It's caused a little bit of issues around, you know, the volume movements for most of the ports. So you had a lot coming in in the first quarter, not yet a law coming for the next few weeks and then more we understand it, you know, the Chinese manufacturing plants kept producing, so there's volume ready to come to the US now this 90 day reprieve has been given on the tariffs. Um, so that, you know, most businesses like stability, right? We handled it fine. There were no issues with CSX, but you know, just managing that fluctuation of volume can be a so far so good when it comes to handling that so far this year. What is it like going, I guess, head to head with Warren Buffett and a Burlington Northern? Well, the good news is we don't really have to go head to head because the way we're structured is Norfolk Southern and CSS compete in the east and BNSF and UP compete in the West, and we are partners. We interchange so we interchange a lot with BNSF and UP in places like Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, so they're more partners than they are competitors, which is great, bigger on the west because part of the it's tonnage and mileage, and so they have a lot more mileage because a lot of stuff is coming west to east. But importantly, if the rail industry works better together, including all of the Class ones, including the two in Canada, you know, we can help this industry be better holistically and we'll all benefit because we can get more volume on the rails, take them off the roads, it's better for all of us. Well, Mr. Buffett recently said, I think it was his, his annual meeting, quote, BNSF is what it should be, is it something specific to them, or do you see that in your operations? Well, we would, we would say that's true for CSX the last two quarters as well. I mean we were arguably the highest margin railroad in 22, 23, and most of 24, and then the hurricanes hit us and then a bunch of other things happened for the last 6 to 8 months we've been in recovery last couple of quarters, our earnings are disappointed as well, to be candid about that. But we last four weeks we're running a lot better and we're getting ourselves we have two major projects. We lost basically the way our network is there's 4 main north-south routes in the east. One comes through the I-95 corridor, one's down to East Tennessee, then Nashville South Birmingham, Alabama, and we lost one of those 4. The hurricanes took out 8 miles of track, 40 miles damage. It's costing us $400 million to replace so we don't have that, that channel right now, and that's really causing disruption in our network as addition to some other things happening, so.I can't speak to BNSF's issues specifically, but typically when you look at the railroad business, it's about efficiency of the operations, how fluid is the network? How are things moving? Do you have the cars moving? Because the interesting thing about the railroad, the better you run, the fewer cars you need on your network. It's counterintuitive because your cycle times are better and you don't need as many cars, but when you run slower, the customers put more cars on your network, which actually slows it you have to get your network running fluidly to get cars off so you can run more fluidly and run faster and that's all the work that we all have to do. I always, uh, I always think back to that, that deal that, um, Buffett made for Burlington or like. You look back and you now you're like, wow, how, how did that you ever see something like that ever happening again where the railroad gets takenover? Well, I think it could happen. I mean, obviously investors can, you know, privatize or they can, you know, we're all, you know, higher valued organizations because we're very profitable, you know, we generate a lot of cash and a lot of returns to our shareholders. I mean our market caps, you know, in the high 50s, it should be higher than that, but that's a reflection of what's happened in the last several quarters and of course you check that stat on Yahoo Finance platform. exactly, but I reality is there's only so many of these things and we have the physical assets andThere's not going to be new railroads built in the United States, you know, so what we have is existing, it's very competitive, very efficient, and very important to the economy as we saw why Congress wouldn't intervene. And so those are good things. Now what we need to do is continue to run better railroads so we can get more volume, generate more profits and returns for our shareholders, but also get more volume for for society and for the economy, and that's the focus we all yeah, I mean there could be, you know, there's been some talk about, you know, you know, is there anyone left to merge with because of competition? Basically I have 2 in the east, 2 in the west, and 2 in Canada of the Class One railroad. So I think there's a lot of, we have a lot of regulatory oversight, um, for obvious reasons, I think, and, and so I think it'd be challenging to have something beyond that, you know, that set up today exist. Alright, so stay tuned on that front and in the last two minutes we always love to get a hot take from our guest. I understand you have quite the the car collection. 31 years in the auto industry. I did, I did buy a few cars over the years. So what whatare your babies in there? I'm I'm a car guy, so you're you're, I get it. Like I'm, I'm in your camp. I maybe don't owe what you own, but I mean I could strive to own that. Well oneof the things that we have in common is we remember the 2017 4 GT model very much, and I have VIN number 3. The 1st 3 that we built in that in that you know, the carbon fiber, great vehicle we built in red, white and blue race livery of the car we ran in Le Mans in 2016 and won and beat Ferrari again. Ford versus Ferrari 50 years after the first time it happened in '66. And so I'm fortunate to have one of those three red white. You don't drive that.I have 300 miles on it and which is I think 299. You're not driving it. I've driven it. I've driven it. Well, I drive those 300 miles, but it's basically giving people rides, you know, you want to ride, you take a little ride, take a photo, and then you put it back away. Um, I have an '05 GT as well, which is the generation that we did before that, um, VIN number 5. I've got a few other fun vehicles as well, but I was, I, I was the champion of bringing back the Bronco into the lineup. So I have like 4 or 5 Broncos, original '74 and some of the new ones, including a Bronco Raptor, which is so yeah, and I, and, you know, I was, I half of, I'm half Italian, um, my mom's a fanelle, and so once I retired from Ford, I could buy a few Italian cars as well, which was pretty fun. And that's it for the latest episode of Opening Bid, of course, sponsored by our friends over at Vanguard. As always, continue to hit us with those likes on YouTube and those thumbs up on all the podcast platforms. I learned a ton from your feedback. We'll talk to you soon. For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. 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Business Wire
6 days ago
- Business Wire
Union Pacific's Big Boy 4014 Will Make Two Whistle-Stops in Colorado During Limited 2025 Excursion
OMAHA, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Union Pacific Railroad announced today its legendary steam locomotive, Big Boy No. 4014, will make two whistle-stops in Greeley, Colorado, this summer as part of a limited summer excursion. Big Boy will be accompanied by Union Pacific's No. 1616 Lincoln Locomotive, the railroad's newest commemorative locomotive, which honors Abraham Lincoln's role in uniting the nation through rail and laying the foundation for America's freight rail network. As part of this year's summer excursion, the Union Pacific Railroad Museum will auction off four exclusive cab rides between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver, Colorado. All proceeds will go to the museum, a nonprofit that shares American history through the lens of the railroad. For more details of the June auction, visit Although this year's excursion is limited, Big Boy will return to the rails in a big way in 2026 to celebrate America's 250 th anniversary. Stay tuned for details. The 2025 excursion: July 17 Cheyenne, Wyoming, departs 10 a.m. MDT Greeley, Colorado, 11:30 a.m.-12 p.m. MDT July 19 Greeley, Colorado, 8:30-8:50 a.m. MDT Cheyenne, Wyoming, arrives 10:30 a.m. MDT Twenty-five Big Boys were built during World War II, but only eight survived. No. 4014 is the only one of the eight still in operation and remains the world's largest operating steam locomotive. Union Pacific reminds all rail fans to keep safety top of mind and stay 25-feet back from the tracks when taking a picture or viewing the colossal locomotive. That means never take a picture or video standing on the track or the ballast and never climb on the locomotive or equipment. To stay informed about Big Boy's schedule and future steam excursions, please join the Union Pacific Steam Club at A map showing No. 4014's location and route will be available on ABOUT UNION PACIFIC Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) delivers the goods families and businesses use every day with safe, reliable and efficient service. Operating in 23 western states, the company connects its customers and communities to the global economy. Trains are the most environmentally responsible way to move freight, helping Union Pacific protect future generations. More information about Union Pacific is available at
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Chicago commuters in limbo as Union Pacific fights Metra's bid for trackage rights
Thousands of Chicago-area commuters may be caught in a bureaucratic tug-of-war between Metra and Union Pacific, with both sides digging in over who controls access to the city's vital commuter rail lines. With summer approaching and Metra's current contract set to expire on June 30, regular riders are growing anxious about the potential fallout. At the center of the dispute is Metra's request for terminal trackage rights on Union Pacific lines, a move Metra says is necessary to maintain uninterrupted service. But Union Pacific fired back this week, asking the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to dismiss the request, citing a lack of jurisdiction. Also read: Passenger rail revival gains steam as Amtrak Borealis and Virginia services break ridership records by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like New Container Houses Vietnam (Prices May Surprise You) Container House | Search Ads Search Now For many Chicagoans, the prospect of legal delays and stalled negotiations is more than just paperwork, it could mean disrupted commutes, missed shifts, and added stress in a city already struggling with transit challenges. Union Pacific pushes for dismissal based on jurisdiction In a motion filed today, May 23, Union Pacific argued that the STB cannot rule on Metra's petition because Metra operates mostly within state lines. Citing a decades-old regulatory debate, UP contends Metra cannot now claim interstate status after previously maintaining it was not subject to such oversight under the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission. Live Events Union Pacific notes that Metra serves one out-of-state station in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that accounts for just 0.01 per cent of its passengers, a figure it calls 'de minimus.' As such, UP asserts that the STB should have no say over the operations on the fully intrastate UP Northwest and UP West lines. 'The request suffers a fatal jurisdictional defect,' the railroad claims in its filing, arguing that the dispute should be resolved through direct commercial negotiations rather than regulatory intervention. Also read: Trump accelerates campaign to remake federal bureaucracy Metra's push to protect service continuity Metra initially submitted its trackage rights request in March, warning that without it, the expiration of the current access agreement could put continued service in jeopardy. The agency says it is seeking to ensure service stability for the millions of people who rely on commuter rail across the Chicago region. Union Pacific, however, is pushing back hard. Included in its filing is a May 21 letter from UP's CEO to Metra Executive Director Jim Derwinski, stating, 'We will not be stopping service to the millions of people who use Metra daily.' Still, the company maintains that commercial talks should determine the outcome, not legal rulings. The situation escalated after UP publicly urged Metra to accept a new access offer, one it says is modeled after arrangements in Illinois, Colorado, and California. Metra has responded by saying it is currently reviewing the proposal. STB dispute highlights bigger questions for regional rail The back-and-forth has spotlighted larger questions about the governance and funding of regional commuter rail in major US cities. At a time when cities like Chicago are working to rebuild ridership and expand access post-pandemic, disputes like this can undermine public confidence in transit reliability. Also read: 'DOGEfather' Elon Musk swings 'Chainsaw for Bureaucracy' at CPAC, hints at more cuts For daily riders, this isn't just about contracts or regulatory jurisdiction, it's about whether their train will still show up come July. As both parties brace for further proceedings and possible negotiations, the uncertainty continues to mount. And while UP has stated it has no plans to stop service, the lack of a long-term agreement keeps commuters and local officials on edge.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
Deadly Houston train-pedestrian crash: Trespasser killed on Melbourne Street
The Brief Houston police are investigating following a deadly pedestrian vs. train crash. The crash occurred in the 3500 block of Melbourne Street. Officials said the call came in just before 4:15 p.m. HOUSTON - Union Pacific officials said a trespasser on Union Pacific property was struck and killed by a train on Friday. What we know According to authorities, the crash occurred in the 3500 block of Melbourne Street. Officials said the call came in just before 4:15 p.m. Union Pacific officials said the trespasser on Union Pacific property was struck and killed by a train. The train crew was not injured and support is being offered to crew members operating the train at the time of the incident. What we don't know Officials have not provided the name of the person who was killed. The Source Information from the Houston Police Department and Union Pacific officials.
