As an attorney, I always read the fine print before signing off.  And as a political practitioner, I know how often promises pass through Washington without making it home to Georgia.  So, when Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern agreed to merge into America’s first coast-to-coast railroad, my instinct was one that I’ve drilled into my students at Kennesaw State: read the deal before you decide.

That’s exactly what I did. I read it. And the rail merger proposed to the Surface Transportation Board between Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific is clearly positioned to become one of Georgia’s most consequential deals in a generation.

Let’s start with the numbers.  The combined railroad would cover 50,000 route miles across 43 states and 100 ports, taking 2.1 million trucks off of American highways and saving shippers $3.5 billion each year.  These numbers aren’t just projections: they represent the actual savings and highway relief that Georgia families, workers, and businesses will feel from Savannah to Kennesaw. 

This isn’t a hypothetical.  The Surface Transportation Board kicked back the initial application in January — not a rejection so much as a red-pen edit.  The applicants did the work, refiled, and the Board accepted the amended application in May.  The review is moving forward and what that decides will land squarely on Georgia’s highways.

Atlanta has 9 of the country's 100 worst truck bottlenecks and 3 of the top 10, which now brings the conversation home to Cobb County.  The Cobb Cloverleaf, where the I-75 meets the I-285, ranks fifth in the country.  Every Cobb driver has cursed it at least once.  Now we know why.  

Every eighteen-wheeler pulled off that stretch by a faster, cheaper rail option is one less truck weaving between minivans on the way to Kennesaw. Less diesel in our neighborhoods.  Less wear on the highways that our taxes rebuild. And a real cut in the crash risk that comes when heavy freight and family traffic share the same lanes.

Cobb County already knows what a healthy Norfolk Southern looks like. Norfolk Southern's Austell intermodal terminal is a 450-acre facility that ranks as the railroad's second busiest in the country, moving more than half a million containers a year and building toward 650,000.  Their Midtown Atlanta headquarters in Tech Square employs more than 3,300 Georgians, part of a 20,000-employee company that was, in every meaningful sense, born in the South.  A stronger coast-to-coast network keeps those jobs here and pulls more national freight through Georgia, not around it.

Cobb County is one end of that pipeline. Savannah is the other.

The Port of Savannah handled 5.6 million containers in 2024, the fastest-growing container port on the East and Gulf coasts.  Port activity supports nearly 651,000 jobs and $174 billion in annual sales across Georgia.  None of that runs without the rail network tying the docks to the rest of the country. A merged Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern gives Georgia something we've never had: single-line service from Savannah to the West Coast without a c

ompetitor's yard in the middle.

Two closing points: one I’d argue in court and one I’d argue in class. 

Start with the workers. In September 2025, SMART-TD locked in a Jobs for Life Agreementprotecting train and yardmaster crews from involuntary furloughs, and Union Pacific extended it to every union employee at both railroads.  That protection is unheard of in modern rail mergers. 

Then the politics. I chaired the Cobb County GOP. I know a partisan issue when I see one.  This is definitely not the case here.  A faster Cobb Cloverleaf, a stronger Savannah port, protected paychecks for Georgia rail workers, and cheaper groceries at the Publix in Acworth aren't Republican or Democratic priorities.  They're Georgia priorities.

I've read the deal.  Here in Georgia, we should get “on board” and support it.

By Jason Shepherd - Attorney, KSU Professor, Political Scientist, Former Cobb GOP Chairman