The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday, May 21, edition that Canadian Pacific Kansas City chief executive officer Keith Creel says a proposed rail merger in the United States would set off a wave of acquisitions that reduces competition, raises consumer costs and generates freight logjams. A Canadian Press dispatch to The Globe reports that the $85-billion (U.S.) deal would combine Union Pacific's western rail network with Norfolk Southern's eastern rails, creating the first transcontinental railway in the U.S. and handling over 40 per cent of its freight traffic. Mr. Creel says combining the second- and third-largest railways in North America would trigger more mergers among the current big six. He says: "I think it's inevitable. ... This is the first step -- if it gets approved -- to a duopoly." Mr. Creel says any bottlenecks at the would-be rail behemoth would ripple out to affect competitors, causing longer freight delays. "You put a network together that large, that is that connected to Chicago -- and this is just one of many cases -- and it melts down, it affects all of us," he says, referring to the continent's railroad capital. "There's concerns in Kansas City, there's concerns in St. Louis."