Norfolk Southern got safer after Ohio crash. Unions warn of merger risk.
In the two and half years since Norfolk Southern’s devastating train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the company has undergone what it calls a “safety transformation.”
The 2023 derailment was a wake-up call for Norfolk Southern and the industry. The crash, fire and chemical plume forced the town to evacuate, and residents still fear long-term effects of pollution.
The Atlanta-based railroad has since recruited unions and regulators to advise its effort to remake a safety culture and has trumpeted its progress.
It has spent hundreds of millions on new digital train inspection technology to prevent derailments. It has adjusted trainings across the company from its academy to its leadership to continuing education in the field.
In its most recent quarterly earnings, the company touted its year-to-date personal injury and train accident rates have dropped 8% and 28% respectively, compared to 2024.
But as Norfolk Southern nears a potential merger with Omaha-based Union Pacific, some union leaders say they’re concerned about the safety implications of such a massive consolidation.
Last year, federal rail regulators canceled a safety culture assessment at Union Pacific alleging the railroad coached employees and threatened discipline.
Railroad mergers of the past have infamously caused service meltdowns.
Some industry observers worry the combination of Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific, the largest rail industry merger to date could trigger an even worse situation.
The combined railroad, which promises to create the country’s first transcontinental railroad company, would cover more than 50,000 miles across 43 American states and control nearly half of U.S. rail tonnage.
Company leaders have said they’re committed to learning from past mergers’ mistakes to unite their operations safely and in a way that minimizes disruption.
But in a memo against the merger, Union Pacific’s competitor BNSF warned the deal could cause “supply chain chaos” and service disruption that will extend “to the entire U.S. rail network and supply chain as failed merger integrations always have.”
Forty members of the American Chemistry Council have also come out against the deal, warning it would disrupt service, increase costs and make U.S. manufacturing less competitive.
“Safety is a function of … consistency and predictability and accountability,” said Rick Paterson, an independent transport industry analyst.
Employees “know what they’ve got to do, and they’re held to account by their managers. It’s a disciplined, predictable, stable, accountable environment, and that’s where safety is maximized,” he said.
“And as you can imagine, you do a mega merger, and all those things take a hit. You haven’t got stability, you haven’t got predictability, and you’ve got a lot of people running around with their hair on fire.”
John Orr, chief operating officer of Norfolk Southern, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a recent interview that a safety plan will be an important part of the companies’ upcoming application to the Surface Transportation Board. Union Pacific’s CEO has promised to file it before Dec. 1.
That safety plan “will include the elements that have helped to improve (Norfolk Southern’s) safety record for the last 18 months,” Orr said.
“We’re going to continue that path and be very aware,” he said. “Our objective is to continue to keep people focused, keep our safety systems as robust as we have to date, and have that integration as seamless as possible.”
In a statement to the AJC, Union Pacific spokeswoman Robynn Tysver said: “The combined company’s focus will remain on ensuring every employee goes home safe to their families and protecting the communities where we operate. Both Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have strong safety cultures and we will take the best from each railroad to create a cohesive, robust safety culture.”
Union Pacific highlights that last year it saw a 23% decrease in personal injuries and a 20% decrease in derailment incidents.
Federal Railroad Administration safety data offers innumerable ways to track rail safety metrics.
A study of key figures adjusted for scale of the operation shows that Norfolk Southern’s overall accident rate has been lower than Union Pacific’s for the last four years. Its main line derailment rate has also largely fallen below Union Pacific’s since 2018.
Union Pacific’s injury rate, however, was better than Norfolk Southern’s last year.
‘Definitely a concern’
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern both have about a dozen unions across their networks. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen represents more than 10,000 members at both.
While the union hasn’t taken a stance on the merger, Mark Wallace, its national president, told the AJC that based on a recent review of 2024 safety data from the FRA, Norfolk Southern “has a far superior record in almost every category as compared to (Union Pacific).”
Crucially, he said, Norfolk Southern was also the first Class 1 railroad to implement a pilot of the agency’s independent, voluntary Confidential Close Call Reporting program, an effort to target the railroad industry’s long criticized cultural of pressure against reporting safety concerns.
Norfolk Southern, Wallace said, “is a little different than the other large freight carriers” because of that.
Union Pacific told the AJC that while it has committed to join the reporting program known as C3RS, it is still “working through the process.”
Wallace pointed to the railroad’s push into remote-control locomotive technology, which his union has criticized, as an example of Union Pacific’s operating model of “doing more with less.”
A Union Pacific spokeswoman defended the company’s safety record.
“Our record stands for itself, personal injury and derailment rates are down,” she said. “We’ve been very clear that both companies have best practices, especially when it comes to safety; we will take and learn from one another.”
Josh Hartford is special assistant to the president of the IAM union’s rail division, which has 35,000 members across both railroads. He said there is “definitely a concern” about safety related to the merger.
“There is a difference,” he said of the two cultures.
“I wouldn’t say Norfolk Southern is perfect by no means. I would say they have improved some. It is concerning on how Union Pacific has been acting with safety and in my opinion, disregard for the FRA trying to improve safety there.”
The disparities, he noted, are why his and other unions have been advocating for stalled federal railroad safety legislation that would set national standards.
Efforts by the AJC to confirm the status of the FRA’s safety culture assessment at Union Pacific were unsuccessful because of the government shutdown. The company said the agency had planned to restart it just before the shutdown.
Last year, Union Pacific told The Associated Press it believed regulators’ concerns about the canceled assessment were about a message from one manager intended to educate employees and apologized for any “confusion.”
The SMART-TD union, which represents more than 14,000 Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific employees, has recently come out in favor of the merger after striking a deal that protects its members’ jobs.
But in an interview earlier this summer, the union’s safety and legislative director, Jared Cassity told the AJC that Union Pacific has a reputation as the “worst railroad in the country.”
“Ironically, Norfolk Southern used to own that reputation,” he said, but has seen improvement since the East Palestine crash.
In a separate interview after the deal, the union’s transportation division president, Jeremy Ferguson, declined to comment on the two railroad’s safety records, but noted Norfolk Southern’s progress has set it apart since East Palestine.
As to how to go about the merger in a safe way, he said they will do so “very carefully.”
“That includes not flipping the switch on day one and making everybody change … best practices for the last 30 years. We’re going to have to transition much, much slower than we ever have in the past,” he said.
For Ron Kaminkow, a recently retired engineer and trustee for Railroad Workers United, it doesn’t actually matter which railroad is merging.
The most recent one, between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern was far smaller, he noted, but still caused disruption as the two tried to combine IT systems.
And disruption can quickly translate into safety problems, Kaminkow said.
“When things are buggered up on the railroad and crews are exhausted and fatigued, that’s never a safe work situation.”
‘Cannot have a misstep’
A hallmark of Norfolk Southern’s recent safety investments is its digital train inspection technology, which takes images of moving trains and uses a machine learning algorithm to prevent derailments.
The company has nine digital train inspection “portals” on its network and has created a smaller “wheel detection device” just for train wheels, Orr told investors on a recent earnings call.
He estimated the company has already prevented more than 40 derailments with the wheel inspection devices.
“That ability to take ideas, understand the business, convert them into actionable items, and then put them into field use at scale, is testament to the commitment we’ve got on safety,” he said.
The impending merger plans, Union Pacific spokeswoman Tysver said, will include Norfolk Southern’s technology as well as Union Pacific’s “Physics Train Builder,” which uses predictive technology to calculate rail car placement and power.
As the details are worked out, the stakes of avoiding a derailment and service disruption are high for the two railroads in this $85 billion deal.
Norfolk Southern CEO Mark George told investors last month it’s “of paramount importance” next year to “continue this quest toward improving and preserving a very safe railroad.”
“We cannot have a misstep,” he said.
“We’re going to learn from the lessons of the past. We’re going to study that carefully.”
About the Author
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
