WASHINGTON — The Surface Transportation Board has ordered BNSF Railway and Union Pacific to participate in a technical conference next week regarding their dispute over new BNSF international intermodal trains that would serve Salt Lake City via UP trackage rights.
The virtual meeting, which will be held on July 15, will not be open to the public and is intended to allow regulators to learn more about the railroads’ positions.
“Board staff will hold a conference with BNSF and UP to discuss their positions, the operational issues raised by their filings, and the status of their discussions,” the board said in a decision today. “In addition to counsel, the parties will be expected to make available in-house individuals with the operational knowledge and expertise to discuss those issues in detail, including, for example, train volumes and types, and hiring and training needs.”
BNSF last week sought an emergency order from the STB so that it could launch intermodal service linking the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with a new terminal on short line Salt Lake Garfield & Western.
While saying it was not opposed to BNSF’s request, Union Pacific said it would need time to hire crews to handle the trains between Roseville, Calif., and Salt Lake. UP also said the trains would have to run eastbound on the former Southern Pacific route over Donner Pass, rather than against the westbound directional flow of traffic on BNSF’s preferred route, the former Western Pacific through the Feather River Canyon.
Routing the traffic over Donner, UP claims, would trigger a provision requiring BNSF to pay half the cost of UP’s 2009 clearance project on the former SP. UP says it must receive payment before double-stack service can begin via the SP.
BNSF disputes this, noting that the railroads’ trackage rights agreement stipulations regarding tunnel clearance work applies only to domestic hi-cube stack trains – not the international boxes the Salt Lake City trains will carry.
BNSF also claims UP aims to delay the start of service because the trains involve international intermodal contracts that UP lost to BNSF. Ocean carriers CMA CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Co. aim to use the new Salt Lake City service.
Both shipping lines urged the STB to act on BNSF’s request for an emergency order that would allow the service to begin July 7, when the new intermodal terminal opened. The Salt Lake Garfield & Western and the Utah Inland Port Authority also told regulators that they support the start of service.
BNSF and UP officials exchanged letters this week further outlining their discussions over the proposed trackage rights operation.
Intermodal is not a regulated commodity. But the STB has the authority to wade into the dispute because it’s related to the conditions that were imposed as part of Union Pacific’s 1996 acquisition of Southern Pacific.
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