The STB's proposed rules regarding railroad mergers

By Staff -- Purchasing, 2/8/2001

As they stand now, the rules would:

• Require applicants to propose specific remedies to keep open major existing gateways, retain build-out and build-in options and preserve the opportunity of shippers in the so-called bottleneck situation to obtain a contract rate for one segment of a movement in order to separately challenge a rate for the remainder of the movement,

• Force the board to carefully scrutinize future claims of merger benefits and associated timeframes to ensure that they are well documented and reasonable projections,

• Force the board to assess the likely outcome of any major proposal on the future structure of the industry through an examination of a proposed merger's downstream effects, and

• Require merger applicants to cooperate with the Federal Railroad Administration concerning safe implementation of transactions and require them to show that any applications approved by the board are consistent with the North American Free Trade Agreement.