(The following article by Fran Spielman and Robert C. Herguth was posted on the Chicago Sun Times’ website on June 17.)
CHICAGO — Chicago taxpayers will contribute $200 million–nearly as much as six major railroads combined–to eliminate decades-long conflicts that have slowed commuter trains, brought traffic to a standstill and made this city the nation’s No. 1 freight bottleneck.
Twenty-five grade crossings where motorists curse and gnash their teeth while waiting 15 minutes or longer for freight trains to pass will be replaced with overpasses and underpasses.
Six railroad “flyover bridges” will be built to prevent freight trains snailing through Chicago at speeds of 9 to 12 mph from holding up commuter trains that use the same tracks.
Railroad viaducts turned into eyesores by years of neglect will be improved. The St. Charles Air Line that passes through Chicago’s Near South Side will be converted to public use.
The $1.5 billion plan is expected to take up to 12 years and two federal transportation funding cycles to complete.
It will also require Chicago taxpayers to come up with $200 million at a time when as many as 800 more city employees stand to lose their jobs and Mayor Daley is struggling to find the money to continue construction of new streets, alleys and sidewalks as well as libraries, schools and police and fire stations.
At a news conference at 63rd and Harlem, one of the 25 rail crossings targeted for relief, Daley would not reveal where the city’s share would come from. He would only say that City Hall would “prioritize” the transportation funding it gets from Washington and Springfield.
“If you don’t do something about these issues, it gets worse and worse. . . . People are complaining about railroad crossings. . . . In the long run, you’re hurting the economy–not only for the Chicago area, but the nation,” the mayor said.
Rep. William O. Lipinski (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on a congressional subcommittee that helps determine which transportation projects get funded, said the plan unveiled Monday is “not a wish-list. . . . I’m very confident that we will ultimately get all the money necessary.”
The $212 million rail-industry contribution amounts to $35.3 million apiece from six so-called “Class One” rail companies: Canadian National; Canadian Pacific; Burlington Northern Santa Fe; Union Pacific; Norfolk Southern and CSX.
Currently, it takes freight trains two days to go from California to Chicago and another two days to make the slow trek through the notoriously congested Chicago area.
Jim Bender, director of inter-line management of Canadian Pacific, was asked why it took the industry so long to confront a problem that has been snarling rail and vehicular traffic in the Chicago area for decades. “It’s very, very complex–especially when you have six large corporations involved. Railroading is a very capital-intensive business. We have all kinds of priorities. We compete with one another. We had to weed our way through all of those issues,” he said.
Every day, more than 1,200 trains pass through Chicago, carrying 75 percent of the nation’s freight. Chicago is the only city where all six Class-One railroads converge and exchange freight. Chicago is also the No. 1 inter-modal port in the Western Hemisphere and No. 3 in the world. Intermodal denotes the ability to move freight from train to truck trailer and vice versa. An intermodal port is the place where freight is transferred between truck and rail.
When Chicago was socked with a major blizzard in 1999, freight traffic across the country was halted for several weeks.
“We said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this. We can’t shut down Chicago,’ ” said Edward R. Hamberger, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Railroads.
Bob Gallamore, director of Northwestern University’s Transportation Center, said the scope of Monday’s announcement and the level of cooperation that made it happen are both “historic” and “remarkable.” But, it’s only a start, he said.
“A lot of the problems will not be solved by this infusion of $1.5 billion. . . . While this is a huge step forward, I don’t think anybody should be under the impression that this will fix every delay or grade-crossing problem,” said Gallamore, who served as deputy administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration under President Jimmy Carter.
Gallamore said he has little doubt the plan will get the federal funding it needs, in part, because Chicago is a “central hub for the whole nation” and benefits here will have a ripple effect.
Alan Pisarski, a national transportation analyst, was not familiar with the details of the Chicago plan, but said improvements here are long overdue. Ensuring that freight trains adhere to a rigid schedule is becoming increasingly important because of an explosion of international trade and the popularity of what’s known as “just in time delivery,” he said.
That’s where factories order auto parts and other goods as they need them, instead of going through the expense of maintaining huge stockpiles. “If the railroads are going to compete, they’ve got to be on time and play in that high-precision-schedule type of game,” Pisarski said.
Metra has agreed to contribute $20 million to the plan to ease a freight interference problem that accounted for nearly 20 percent of all commuter rail delays during the month of April.
Four Metra routes currently encounter heavy freight traffic: the Union Pacific West, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the Heritage Corridor and the Southwest Service lines.