Coalition to Stop CPKC

One Year into the Oversight Phase

In March 2023, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) approved the merger of the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern railroads and began a seven-year oversight phase to monitor the implementation of the merged CPKC’s operating plan. The Coalition to Stop CPKC has actively engaged with CPKC during the first year of its merger and has expressed continuous concerns to CPKC representatives over the railroad’s lack of progress in implementing several conditions imposed by the STB to mitigate the impacts of the merger on the Coalition communities.

In the merger application, CP and KCS stated that an average of around three (3) freight trains traversed the MD-W Line from Elgin to Bensenville daily. The Applicants also said that their post-merger operations would increase the daily freight trains by eight (8) to roughly 11 trains per day in the first three years of the merged railroad operations. However, the STB, the Coalition, Metra, and others expressed concerns that the train count would probably be higher and the trains, on average, would be longer.

As part of the March 2023 decision, CPKC is required to submit monthly train data to the STB. In the first year of the merger, the Coalition has experienced an average freight train volume increase of roughly one additional freight train per day (around seven per week). However, this number is variable; the highest weekly post-merger volume reported to date saw 35 freight trains traversing the MD-W Line (five per day), or roughly 14 more than the pre-merger average weekly volume. During this first-year oversight period, the Coalition’s experts have also seen spikes in the weekly volume of through freight trains greater than 10,000 feet in length traversing the line. CPKC has reported as many as five (5) per week.

CPKC has admitted that freight demand has slowed down in the current economy since the merger was approved, so the Coalition fully expects the number of trains to continue to increase not only this year, but into the future.

Even with the modest freight train volume increase that has been realized to date, the Coalition has experienced significant extended blocked crossings. The Village of Bensenville, one of the Coalition’s eight municipalities, alone has sent 19 emails to CPKC inquiring about train blockages on multiple crossings. To date, CPKC has not provided accurate and consistent information about the extent to which its stopped or slow-moving trains block road crossings. The Coalition has experienced multiple 30+ minute blockages due to slow-moving trains that CPKC did not report.

The mitigation measures CPKC volunteered to take concerning blocked crossings have thus far proved inadequate. Among their deficiencies is a requirement that a crossing must be blocked for 10 minutes before any reporting requirement is triggered. The presence of a freight train at a road crossing for much less than 10 minutes can cause considerable disruption to daily traffic use. More importantly, it can cause life-threatening delays in the response time of police, firefighters, and paramedics to emergencies. Consequently, the 10-minute threshold eliminates critical information about the merger’s adverse effects.

Another challenge is that under the STB’s mitigation condition, CPKC is only required to report a “blocked crossing” if the train is completely stopped or engaged in a “switching” operation, but not if it is only moving slowly.

One of the most anticipated elements of the STB’s mitigations was hazardous materials training for Coalition emergency responders. During the merger discussions, CPKC touted a customized, hands-on training at the American Railroad’s Security and Emergency Response Training Center (SERTC) in Pueblo, Colorado. However, SERTC is undergoing a restructuring and redesign process that has rendered the facility unavailable until late spring 2024. In place of the promised training, CPKC offered a two-day training at the Illinois Fire Service Institute, a service that is already afforded to all Illinois fire service professionals.

In addition to a less comprehensive training offering, CPKC has denied the Coalition’s request for “backfill pay,” which is the cost of ensuring that the absence of the first responder being trained is filled by a qualified substitute, which typically entails paying overtime wages. In this current environment, where staffing public safety positions is exceedingly difficult, these training opportunities will have limited uptake without backfill reimbursement because of the pressure they apply to community budgets and staffing levels.

Additionally, as part of the mitigation measures, CPKC volunteered to install and fund – subject to STB oversight – a predictive mobility system interconnected with existing railroad crossing signals that will deliver advanced notice of blocked crossings to Coalition citizens, police, fire, and rescue operations. During the first few months of the oversight period, CPKC and the Coalition collaborated on potential appropriate technologies offered by several third-party vendors. However, despite those discussions, on November 30, 2023, CPKC announced it had unilaterally, and without prior notice to the Coalition, retained a vendor that had never been discussed.

Since then, the Coalition has attempted, in good faith, to understand the capabilities of CPKC’s choice and whether its technology complies with the STB’s directive to install a predictive system interconnected with existing railroad crossing signals. However, questions have been raised about the deployment of the purported technology in other communities, and the information received to date about the technology has caused the Coalition to doubt whether it is an acceptable substitute for the interconnected system CPKC was directed to install.

While the Coalition acknowledges and appreciates CPKC's efforts to collaborate and engage with Coalition communities, making themselves available to hear Coalition concerns, we do believe the progress that has been made toward fulfilling the STB’s required mitigation measures has been slow going. In addition to the lack of collaboration in selecting a predictive mobility technology, the Coalition believes additional areas lacking collaboration have stunted progress on mitigation measures.

These mitigations include implementing positive train control wireless technology tie-ins at crossings adjacent to Metra platforms, providing an automated system that generates data regarding blocked crossings, and redistributing existing or new equipment assets to improve emergency response capabilities, among other shortcomings. Simply put, the Coalition believes CPKC could make a more concerted effort to comply with the conditions it volunteered to undertake and that the STB imposed.

The Coalition will continue to monitor CPKC’s implementation of its operating plan and the mitigation measures it was ordered to undertake. If necessary, the Coalition will not hesitate to ask CPKC and the STB to modify the mitigation measures or adopt additional measures to ensure that the merged railroad’s operations do not cause additional adverse impacts to the Coalition communities. Thus far, even though our communities have seen a modest increase in freight train traffic that CP and KCS projected during the merger proceeding at the STB, blocked crossings have increased in frequency and duration. As CPKC’s freight train volumes continue to grow to the levels projected by CPKC (and perhaps beyond), the negative impacts on blocked crossings will increase commensurately absent effective mitigation.