CPKC will mark Rail Safety Week 2026 with a campaign pressing the public to act safely at level crossings and around tracks on its cross-border network.

The Canadian, US and Mexican operator says the annual initiative targets the behaviour that drives most rail-related injuries and deaths involving the public: drivers who ignore crossing warnings, pedestrians who walk on or along tracks, and people who take shortcuts through rail property.

Rail Safety Week is a industry-wide observance in which North American freight and passenger operators run coordinated outreach. CPKC's 2026 message centres on two behaviours it treats as the core preventable risks: obeying active warning devices and gates at grade crossings, and staying off tracks and right-of-way except at designated crossings.

What is CPKC asking the public to do?

The company frames its guidance around simple rules for anyone who encounters its infrastructure:

• Slow down, look and listen at every crossing, and stop when lights, bells or gates activate
• Never drive around lowered gates or stop on the track
• Treat every track as in use at any time, in both directions
• Stay off rail property and use only designated pedestrian crossings
• Keep off bridges and tunnels, where there is no room to escape an approaching train

CPKC's network spans Canada, the United States and Mexico following the 2023 merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, making crossing and trespass outreach relevant across three national audiences with different road-rail interfaces and enforcement regimes.

Why operators keep returning to this message

For freight railroads, public-behaviour incidents at crossings and on right-of-way remain among the hardest safety problems to eliminate, because they occur outside the operator's own operational control. Engineering measures — gates, lights, grade separation, fencing — reduce risk, but regulators and operators alike treat public education as the remaining lever.

That is why Class I railroads run campaigns of this type each year alongside their regulator-facing safety programmes. In Canada and the United States, Transport Canada and the Federal Railroad Administration both publish crossing and trespasser incident data, and trespassing on rail property has repeatedly ranked as a leading cause of rail-related fatalities in those statistics.

CPKC positions Rail Safety Week as part of a year-round effort rather than a one-off event, encouraging communities, schools and first responders along its corridors to reinforce the same messages.

What comes next

The campaign runs through Rail Safety Week 2026, with CPKC expected to publish supporting material for drivers, pedestrians and community partners across its three-country network as the observance proceeds.