(The following story by Guy Tridgell appeared on the Southtown Star website on October 12.)
CHICAGO — Matteson is about to become a tale of two cities.
If the controversial sale of the EJ&E Railroad goes through, the town’s fire department could find itself sealed off from a sizeable chunk of Matteson.
“I don’t want to say it’s going to be a real burden to us. We don’t have a lot of calls south of the tracks,” Fire Chief Nick Wilkens said. “But if we get even two calls, they are still from our citizens. We have to protect them.”
Police and fire departments up and down the rail line are struggling with the same dilemma: How to respond to emergencies in communities suddenly divided by a surge in trains on the EJ&E.
A year ago, Canadian National Railway petitioned federal regulators for the right to buy the 198 miles of track from U.S. Steel for $300 million. The Montreal rail giant wants the tracks, which form an arc around the suburbs, as a reliever for its five lines that flow into Chicago.
The Surface Transportation Board, the division of the U.S. Department of Transportation that oversees rail matters, expects to issue a ruling by Jan. 31.
For towns along the EJ&E, places such as New Lenox, Frankfort, Mokena, Richton Park, Matteson and Chicago Heights, the impacts will be felt immediately if the purchase is approved.
Between Joliet and the Indiana state line, suburbs that are used to six trains a day will see as many as 34. And just five streets along that 35-mile stretch – LaGrange Road in Frankfort, Interstate 57 and Governors Highway in Matteson, Orchard Drive in Park Forest and Illinois 394 in Ford Heights – have underpasses and overpasses that keep traffic from intersecting with the tracks.
Anyone who drives in the area will feel the repercussions.
The challenge for emergency providers, whose jobs can mean life or death, is to keep from getting “trained.”
“It has become a huge, huge concern,” said New Lenox public safety chief Dan Martin, whose town doesn’t feature one bypass over or under the EJ&E. “If these trains lock up the grade crossings for a long period of time, there is no way around the tracks for us.”
Dealing with a lot of ‘What ifs’
As the Matteson fire chief, Wilkens is in charge of providing fire protection and ambulance service across 19 square miles, including his community and neighboring Olympia Fields.
He has one fire station, at U.S. 30 and Olympia Way north of the tracks, to do the job.
It’s Matteson’s southeast quadrant that worries Wilkens most these days.
The corner of the village is home to Pattersonville, a knot of 20 older, modest homes that aren’t connected to the municipal water supply. If there is a fire in Pattersonville, tankers are required to put it out. Next to Pattersonville are the 40 to 50 homes in the 218th Street neighborhood.
To reach the area, Matteson firefighters will not think twice about using Main Street today. And if they encounter one of the rare times when a train is on the EJ&E, there always is Governors Highway, which cuts underneath the tracks.
But Main Street is no longer a reliable option if the number of trains on the EJ&E jumps from nine a day to 32.
The Governors Highway viaduct also is prone to flooding, shutting down for days at a time, most recently during a weekend of heavy rain in September.
Worst-case scenario: There’s a fire in Pattersonville or 218th Street, a train on the EJ&E is blocking Main Street, with Governors Highway impassable because of floods.
“That is probably my biggest concern,” Wilkens said.
It’s not just responding to emergencies that worries Frankfort fire Chief James Grady.
He’s also concerned about reaching the two closest hospitals – Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet and Olympia Fields Medical Center in Olympia Fields – after responding to accident victims and other people in crisis south of the EJ&E tracks.
Two of the primary arteries from Frankfort, U.S. 52 and Harlem Avenue, cross the tracks. Both spots could see 28 trains a day, an increase of 22.
“We are dealing with a lot of ‘what-if’s’ right now,” Grady said. “The reality is we are going to see some delays.”
“We are used to it”
For solutions, EJ&E towns might want to look to the north.
In Blue Island, Ground Zero for train traffic in the south suburbs with 100 trains passing through on two freight lines each day, coping with the railroads is as old as the town itself.
Fire chief Bob Copp said co-existing with the trains remains a juggling act. Help from neighboring fire departments, in the form of mutual-aid agreements, and constant vigilance of the tracks are essential.
“We are used to it,” he said.
His biggest problem? The CSX Corp. tracks on Western Avenue near 139th Street. Trains will park and idle because they cannot get into a huge rail yard just east of town.
Both of the city’s fire stations are north of the tracks, so part of south Blue Island is unreachable at times.
“I would love to add another station,” Copp said. “Money is another story.”
Copp said the department has learned to adapt.
The department’s policy is to stay off Western Avenue unless absolutely necessary when responding to fires and medical emergencies. If time is critical, police on the street will notify dispatchers if the crossing is blocked.
For years, Blue Island has maintained agreements with the Posen Fire Department to make sure the city’s southwest side is covered if Copp’s firefighters cannot make it because of a train.
Technology has provided some assistance recently.
Six months ago, security cameras were installed across Blue Island thanks to federal Homeland Security grants. At least one of the cameras is trained on the Western Avenue crossing.
“It’s another tool for our dispatchers,” Copp said. “A couple of times the dispatchers have told us, ‘The railroad tracks are clear.’ That’s been fantastic.”
Even with the daily challenges posed by trains, Copp said his staff has always met the universal goal of fire departments to be out the door and at the spot they are needed in three to four minutes. No one, Copp said, has died in Blue Island because an ambulance or fire truck was stuck at a crossing, waiting for a train to pass.
With a little help from their neighbors
Bottom line: If CN does acquire the line, police and fire departments along the EJ&E should prepare for trains.
A Federal Railroad Administration study in 2006 urged communities to use multiple strategies to conquer the problem.
If the line does see an influx in traffic, New Lenox police plan on a strict adherence to zone patrols so no region is left unmanned at any time.
Frankfort will rely more heavily on agreements with Richton Park, Manhattan, Monee and New Lenox for fire departments in those communities to cover for Frankfort’s firefighters in the event they are cut off by trains. Matteson is doing the same thing with Richton Park.
What that means for residents neighboring the EJ&E is they better get used to someone from the next village over answering their calls when they dial 911.
The railroad administration also suggests railroads contribute by building a second set of tracks in some areas so slower trains can stop without tying up a line in the event of an emergency. The FRA calls grade separations – overpasses and underpasses – the “gold standard” of solutions, but a single project can cost $100 million or more.
CN is balking at paying that kind of money. And suburbs on the EJ&E don’t have the resources to do it themselves.
Steve Kulm, an railroad administration spokesman, said whatever outcome, it won’t be the last time fire and police officials and the railroads have had to figure out their differences.
“There is always going to be a number of communities in this same situation,” Kulm said. “The basic problem we have is towns grew up and developed around the railroads.”