A community explainer · Every claim cited

The largest railroad merger in U.S. history runs through your neighborhood.

Union Pacific wants to buy Norfolk Southern for $85 billion. The deal would create the first coast-to-coast railroad under one owner. Houston sits at the center of it. This site explains what the filings actually say, in plain language, with sources you can check yourself.

The deal at a glance

$85B Proposed purchase price. The largest railroad merger in U.S. history.

~50% Share of U.S. rail freight the combined railroad would control, on a roughly 55,000-mile network.

3 Major railroads that could remain if the merger triggers further consolidation. The industry had more than 30 in the 1980s.

95% Share of Houston trackage rights held by Union Pacific today.

UP-NS merger application, STB Docket FD 36873; letter of 40+ Members of Congress to STB, Feb. 4, 2026 (STB filing 310838); Not Another Houston community fact sheet, Mar. 2026.

What is happening right now

UP and NS filed a 7,000-page application in December 2025. The Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that decides rail mergers, rejected it a month later as incomplete. The railroads filed a revised application on April 30, 2026, and the Board accepted it in May. On August 18 the Board set the schedule for the rest of the case. On September 18 it declined to throw the application out early, so the full review goes forward.

The next big date is November 18, 2026. That is the deadline for public comments, protests, and requests for conditions. A public hearing comes after March 29, 2027, with the date and place still to be announced. The fastest way to get your experience on the record is the resident statement.

STB Decision, Docket FD 36873, served Jan. 16, 2026; STB press release PR 26-13 (May 28, 2026); STB procedural schedule decision, Aug. 18, 2026 (PR 26-21); STB press release PR 26-23 (Sept. 18, 2026).

Federal law requires the Board to approve the deal only if it is consistent with the public interest. Under rules written after the merger meltdowns of the 1990s, the railroads carry the burden of proving the deal would enhance competition, improve service, and outweigh its harms.

49 U.S.C. § 11324; 49 C.F.R. § 1180.1(c); STB Major Merger Rules (2001).

Why Houston specifically

Houston is one of the busiest rail chokepoints in the country, and the East End carries the heaviest load. Federal data shows Houston leads the nation in reported blocked crossings, year after year. UP's own filings project more trains through the city and hundreds more daily trucks at Settegast Yard. The filings also acknowledge that the added traffic may cause more blocked crossings.

FRA Blocked Crossing Incident Reports, 2021–2025 (fra.dot.gov/blockedcrossings); UP-NS application filings EI-34153, EI-34157, EI-34160.

New to this? Start with three facts.

1. Eastwood Street is the most-reported blocked crossing in the United States. It logged 937 complaints in 2025 alone. Nine of the ten most-reported crossings nationally in 2024 were East End UP crossings.

2. The merger adds traffic here. The railroads' latest tables, filed September 9, 2026, project activity at the Settegast intermodal yard rising 140% by Year 5, from 242 to 610 units a day. The rail lines feeding the East End carry about 33% more tonnage in the federal review's own dataset.

3. You can still be heard. The STB takes public comments through November 18, 2026. Houston officials have formally requested a public hearing here, and residents can sign a statement that organizers file on the docket.

FRA Blocked Crossing Incident Reports, 2021–2025; UP-NS Master Data Tables, OEA filing EI-34309 (Sept. 9, 2026); OEA scoping dataset (Aug. 19, 2026); procedural comments of Houston officials, Oct.–Nov. 2025 (STB filings 310158, 310323, 310413, 310428, 310429).

Has something like this happened before?

Yes, and Houston remembers it. When UP acquired Southern Pacific in 1996, it promised efficiency and better service. Within months the combined network melted down. Trains backed up from Houston toward Chicago, plants along the Ship Channel curtailed operations, and the congestion took years to fully unwind. The episode pushed the STB to rewrite its merger rules in 2001 and raise the bar for future deals. Today's proposal is far larger than that one.

STB Major Merger Rules, 5 S.T.B. 539 (2001); Not Another Houston community fact sheet, Mar. 2026.

How this site is organized

Timeline: every major date, from the July 2025 announcement to the current review.
Before the Filing: the support letters UP gathered before anyone could read the application, and what Houston officials asked for instead.
The Opposition: Republican members of Congress, state attorneys general, senators, and cities that have raised alarms.
Antitrust: why competition experts and shippers worry about a two- or three-railroad country.
Houston Data: blocked crossings, stopped trains, and train length, by the numbers.
Impacts: transportation, air quality and cancer clusters, neighborhood truck traffic, and the Settegast Yard expansion.
Discrepancies: where UP's public claims and its own filings do not match.
Take Action: sign the resident statement, file your own comment, and get ready for the hearing.

About this site. Community volunteers in Houston's East End built this explainer. It cites public records: STB docket filings, Federal Railroad Administration data, SEC disclosures, and letters from elected officials. Filing numbers are listed so you can look up the originals in the STB's filing search under Docket FD 36873. If you find an error, tell us and we will fix it.