(The following story by Andre Salles appeared on The Beacon News website on September 10.)
AURORA, Ill. — Less than an hour into Tuesday night’s hearing on a controversial railroad sale proposal, Aurora resident John Lieck stepped up to the microphone, air horn in hand.
Lieck lives on Keating Drive, not far from the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway tracks that run through the far East Side. If Canadian National Railway Company is allowed to buy those tracks, and significantly increase the number of trains barreling over them, Lieck said, his nights will go something like this:
“Say you go to bed at 10 o’clock,” he said, clutching the air horn. “Then, at 10:15 …” HOOONK!
“And then at 11:30 …” HOOONK!
And on and on. Lieck’s comments (and sound effects) drew applause and cheers from the roughly 350 people spread out around the West Aurora High School auditorium, mostly there to oppose the planned $300 million sale.
The federal Surface Transportation Board, which must approve the transaction before it can go through, scheduled Tuesday’s meeting to hear public comment on its study of the potential impact of the sale, released in draft form last month.
And they got an earful. From elected officials to environmental engineers to plain old homeowners, roughly 60 people signed up to address the STB, represented there by Deputy Chief of Staff Phillis Johnson-Ball and John Morton of HDR Inc., the firm that conducted the study. Neither gave any comment themselves, but sat and listened for three hours as one by one, people spoke their minds.
The potential sale of the EJ&E has been a hot topic for nearly a year. Last December, Canadian National announced its plans to buy the 200-mile track, which runs in a semicircle from northwest Indiana to Chicago’s south suburbs.
The plan is to divert many of the trains running through Chicago now, and clogging up traffic there, onto these suburban lines, which many fear will cause traffic backups and safety hazards, among other problems.
The STB has been studying the impact of the sale for months and is in the final stages of its report — after the public comment period ends on Sept. 30, the three-member board will consider the comments and issue its final report.
But many speakers Tuesday took issue not just with the study, but with the STB’s decision to hold the hearing at West High, almost 10 miles from the nearest EJ&E track.
Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner, who co-chairs The Regional Answer to Canadian National (TRAC), a group of local municipalities opposed to the sale, compared Tuesday’s meeting to a similar one held in July on the East Side, which drew about 1,500 people.
“You would have seen that many people at least tonight, had they held the meeting in the vicinity of the affected areas,” Weisner said.
Speakers criticized the STB’s “fuzzy math” on some sections of the study, accusing them of using old and incorrect numbers. Eric Gallt, Aurora’s traffic engineer, said his own traffic studies find many more cars crossing some of the affected intersections than the STB’s figures would indicate.
And many balked at the idea that CN would only pay a fraction of the potentially hundreds of millions it would cost to separate crossings along the line, leaving the rest to taxpayers.
Aurora Police Chief Greg Thomas and Fire Chief Tim Oelker spoke about the potential effect traffic backups could have on their rescue operations, when every critical second counts.
“It’s not a matter of if it will happen, but when,” Oelker said.
Only one man, Aurora resident Martin Massa, spoke in support of the deal. Massa lives on the far East Side and said he has gotten used to loud trains and to traffic backups, and would just “build more time into my schedule for this.” But he also noted that intersections like Ogden Avenue, which sees roughly 55,000 cars per day, need upgrading now, whether or not more trains run across them.
The public comment period ends on Sept. 30. The STB has not set a definite timeline for the final impact study, but it is expected between January and March of next year.