proposed $85 billion acquisition<\/a> of Norfolk Southern is approved. But Angel said he isn’t too worried about that yet because the Surface Transportation Board’s formal review of the deal hasn’t even started. <\/p>\nMost observers believe CSX and BNSF will be at a competitive disadvantage if that merger is approved. That new transcontinental railroad would control nearly half of all freight and could shave more than a day off delivery times because it won\u2019t have to hand off shipments between railroads in the middle of the country. At this point, CSX and BNSF are focused on improving their delivery times through cooperative agreements instead of a merger.<\/p>\n
Heading into 2026, CSX is working on improving productivity while limiting costs. But Angel said he expects only modest economic growth this year amid all the uncertainty. He predicted that CSX will see revenue grow only by low single digits, and the railroad pulled its targets for 2027 that it had established a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus is just making sure that we can be as competitive as we can. But at the end of the day, we can create value by running CSX better every day,\u201d Angel said. <\/p>\n
Last fall CSX wrapped up the two major construction projects that disrupted its network and limited the railroad\u2019s flexibility. CSX completed a major tunnel renovation in Baltimore and repairs from Hurricane Helene. That helped raise its trains’ average speed to 19.6 mph in the fourth quarter while delivering 87% of its shipments on time.<\/p>\n
The tunnel project will allow CSX to begin hauling metal shipping containers filled with assorted goods stacked two high across its network this year. But competitor Norfolk Southern announced a similar double-stacked service in the east earlier this week.<\/p>\n
CSX is one of the largest railroads in North America, operating in the eastern United States.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CSX said Thursday that its profit slipped 2% in the fourth quarter as the railroad dealt with weak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[558,116,118,117,63572,1110],"class_list":["post-128627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-business","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-steve-angel","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}