On August 22, 2025, BNSF Railway and CSX announced a new coast-to-coast intermodal services agreement. According to a CSX official, the partnership seeks to connect “western and eastern US markets, creating faster, more reliable service.” This brief piece will examine the details of the agreement, what it means for shippers and rail freight movement, and how this agreement fits into the broader conversation about railroad mergers.

Details of the BNSF-CSX agreement

Source: BNSF Railway

The new BNSF-CSX partnership includes the following elements:

1. A new coast-to-coast domestic intermodal service connecting Southern California to Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida. The CSX intermodal terminal at the Charlotte Inland Port is a logistics hub that can accommodate around 2,000 containers and enables the Port of Wilmington to handle greater cargo volumes. The inland port serves the I-85 and I-77 corridors, which facilitate freight movement across the southeastern region. The Charlotte inland port sees regular intermodal traffic to the Port of Wilmington. CSX’s intermodal facility at Jacksonville is a hub for ocean-going freight and a central point to transfer goods to different markets in the southeastern US. The new coast-to-coast service will connect the busy southeastern markets in Charlotte and Jacksonville with the ports in Southern California, via a BNSF-CSX interchange at Birmingham, Alabama, and through BNSF’s haulage rights over CSX to Atlanta, Georgia.
2. A new direct international intermodal service connecting Kansas City with the Port of New York/ New Jersey and Norfolk, VA. This connection will open BNSF’s intermodal traffic to ports in the mid-Atlantic and northeast. In 2024, BNSF added 51 miles of new double track to its Emporia Subdivision in Kansas, which is part of BNSF’s Southern Transcon route connecting Southern California with Chicago. The new track will help the flow of increased intermodal traffic coming from the new connection to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
3. A new service between Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, GA aims to convert over-the-road trucking to rail movements. BNSF plans to add two new 10,000-foot sidings between Phoenix and Flagstaff to enable smoother movements along the main line. Adding sidings boosts mainline capacity and reliability by enabling trains to meet or overtake, reducing cascading delays, and creating flexibility for staging and maintenance without blocking the through track, and is more cost‑effective than fully double tracking a line.

What this means for shippers and rail freight

The new intermodal services outlined in the agreement enable shippers in the western US to access ports in the eastern US and vice versa. A new rail connection between the southeastern US and Southern California provides shippers with a modal alternative to moving goods by truck along the I-20 and I-40 corridors, alleviating congestion on highways by shifting long-haul container truck traffic to rail.

This agreement focuses on intermodal traffic, a growing segment of the freight transportation network. Intermodal trains are increasingly common, with the long container trains becoming a more ubiquitous sight on the main line. Total intermodal traffic has increased since 2024. On average, 269,315 intermodal units were moved per week as of August 2025, representing a 4.6 percent increase in total intermodal units moved on US rails from 2024. CSX and BNSF are capitalizing on the growing demand for intermodal shipping by introducing new routes, which provide shippers with new options and will further increase the flow of intermodal traffic across the country to reach consumers quickly and efficiently.

Mergers vs. Non-mergers

Partnerships between railroads to provide joint rail services are not new. In July 2025, CSX and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) came into an agreement to provide rail service connecting Mexico, Texas, and the southeastern US. CSX and Canadian National (CN) announced an intermodal service in 2019 between Montreal and the northeastern ports in Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey.

The timing of the CSX-BNSF partnership agreement is notable. It comes in the wake of the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger announcement in July 2025. When the UP/NS merger was announced, a prevailing thought among the railroad community was that a merger announcement between the other Class I railroads, notably CSX and BNSF, was possible or even likely. While the CSX-BNSF partnership could be seen as a response to the UP/NS merger announcement, it is unlikely that the work to form this partnership between CSX and BNSF began only in the weeks following the UP/NS merger announcement. These decisions typically take a great deal of planning, and the motivation to form a partnership could be focused on providing more intermodal service rather than opposing a major merger. It may instead be appropriate to think of this partnership as a response to the same underlying economic context that led UP and NS to propose a merger. However, the announcement of the CSX-BNSF partnership, which occurred close to the UP/NS merger announcement makes one wonder to what extent a joint agreement provides the same outcomes for service and economic competitiveness as a full merger.

A critical difference between the CSX-BNSF agreement and the proposed UP/NS merger is the role of the Surface Transportation Board (STB). In 2001, the STB updated its rules on major rail consolidation procedures to be stricter in allowing for larger railroad mergers. According to the STB, alliances and joint ventures, such as the agreement between CSX and BNSF, do not necessarily require the STB’s approval. Moreover, the STB’s 2001 rules noted that private sector initiatives like joint-marketing agreements and interline partnerships “can produce many of the efficiencies of a merger while risking less potential harm to the public.”

While the 2001 rules present the STB as cautious towards railroad mergers, the fate of the UP/NS proposed merger remains to be seen. In August 2025, President Trump ordered the removal of STB Board member Robert Primus. Notably, Primus was the only board member to vote against the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger in 2023, although that decision was rendered using the pre-2001 rules. A truncated STB may prove helpful to get a merger approved, but there is still time before UP and NS submit the formal merger application. In any case, non-merger agreements like CSX and BNSF’s partnership avoid some of the STB involvement by avoiding a formal merger.

The CSX-BNSF agreement is not a formal merger and is more akin to a “joint marketing agreement,” or some private sector alliance (like airline codesharing), and does not require the same level of approval as the UP/NS merger does. As such, CSX and BNSF can begin their new intermodal services more quickly than if they decided to merge their two roads into one. Customers and shippers who rely on CSX and BNSF may see the benefit of new intermodal services in the short term. The UP/NS merger will take time, and customers on the UP/NS lines will have to wait to feel the impact of the merger.

The CSX-BNSF intermodal services agreement is focused on intermodal traffic, meaning its impacts are limited to that segment; other types of freight—such as coal, grain, and mixed traffic—fall outside the scope of the agreement. This stands in contrast to a full merger, which would affect the entirety of a railroad’s operations. However, the agreement includes the addition of new sidings between Phoenix and Flagstaff, AZ, which will improve the efficiency of not just intermodal traffic, but all rail traffic moving through BNSF’s Southern Transcon.