From the Editor - Upping the track upkeep ante; plus: CPKC, at long last

By Pat Foran, Editor

Many North American freight and passenger railroads expect to complete more maintenance-of-way work this year, and more than half of the roads that responded to our annual MOW Spending Report survey will spend more on that work in 2023, as Managing Editor Jeff Stagl reports in our print edition this month. 

Based on our exclusive survey and other available information, the 22nd annual MOW Spending Report breaks down the spending plans of nearly five dozen freight and passenger roads. 

With few exceptions, the big(ger) spenders’ increases were modest. Higher material (among other) costs continue to put a damper on things in every industry. But rail, particularly the Class I contingent, can’t afford to cut back on track upkeep. Capacity spending? Yes. Some years. But I can’t foresee major roads spending less on track maintenance. Given the heightened-bordering-on-intense interest in rail the past couple of months, I think some may well spend even more this year than they expected to when they crafted their ’23 budgets.  

The spending report data will be available online In May in the form of two ebooks: 2023 MOW Spending: Freight Rail Infrastructure Investments and 2023 MOW Spending: Transit Rail Infrastructure Investments. We’ll post the requisite links at progressiverailroading.com as soon as the ebooks are available.  

CPKC: At long last, the whole new ballgame 

Nearly two years to the day they announced their urge to merge, Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern on March 15 received the Surface Transportation Board’s blessing to combine. 

Congrats to CP leader Keith Creel (he’ll be president and CEO of CPKC) and KCS leader Pat Ottensmeyer (he’ll serve as an adviser to Creel through the rest of the year). It feels like a zillion years since I talked with Keith and Pat on Sunday morning, March 21, 2021, about how CPKC would create the first rail network connecting the United States, Mexico and Canada. Keith reiterated what rail map readers already knew: CPKC is “the only possible combination — the only one — that has no overlap,” he said in a piece published on RailPrime, our digital subscription offering dedicated to all things freight transportation. 

Congrats, too, to the STB, as my colleague Tony Hatch wrote in a March 21 message to his clients, for approving the deal with minor conditions and displaying an “ability to look beyond the shouting about rails these days.” Yep, and yep. 

As former CN CEO JJ Ruest put it in a classy LinkedIn post after sharing a Wall Street Journal story about the approved merger deal: “Well done by the CP team. The combination makes for a great continental supply chain franchise.” In April 2021, the then-Ruest-led CN made a bold attempt to merge with KCS a month after KCS agreed to merge with CP.  

I look forward to talking with Keith, Pat and the CPKC team as they aim to take this whole new ballgame of a supply-chain franchise (and, uniquely, the North American rail industry) to the next level.