(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on October 26, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Canadian National Railway will have to expand its monthly reporting to regulators about its newly acquired short line outside Chicago, as the Surface Transportation Board said the reports must include all CN’s line segments linked in track-use agreements.
The STB in its December approval of CN’s purchase of Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway ordered CN to file monthly reports on how its operation of EJ&E affects area suburbs.
But when CN in August filed notices that it was knitting all its Chicago-area company units through 17 separate trackage rights deals, suburbs in the TRAC coalition – for The Regional Answer to Canadian National – asked the STB to order clarifying the monthly reports to cover how those agreements unfold.
Although the STB went along with that request, it rejected a TRAC plea to reopen the entire merger approval and order a broad environmental impact review because of CN’s track-use agreements among its rail units.
“Minor coordinations such as intra-family trackage rights arrangements are not unusual,” the board said, and “do not cast doubt on the traffic projections” in CN’s original operating plan for its EJ&E merger.