(The following editorial appeared on the Daily Herald website on January 12.)
CHICAGO — We hope Metra Executive Director Phil Pagano is correct.
He told transportation writer Marni Pyke in Sunday’s Daily Herald that the STAR line – the suburb-to-suburb rail system that we have backed for years as one answer to the region’s traffic congestion – is not dead despite the merger between Canadian National Railway and the EJ&E.
On Christmas Eve the U.S. Surface Transportation Board approved the controversial merger, which would put more freight train traffic on the EJ&E line that runs from Waukegan to Gary, Ind.
That same line is the proposed site of the STAR line, which is intended to run partly alongside I-90 from O’Hare International Airport to Hoffman Estates and then run on the EJ&E from Hoffman Estates to Joliet.
“We’ve had conversations with CN – we intend to work with them to get this project accomplished,” Pagano said.
The question is whether CN will work with Metra. CN in the past has been reluctant to let Metra use its tracks for the STAR (Suburban Transit Access Route) line.
“We have to protect our freight franchise,” CN spokesman Jim Kvedaras said last year. Instead, it wanted Metra to build tracks alongside the EJ&E.
But the cost of building new tracks is prohibitive and many have predicted that could kill the project, which already is estimated at costing $1.2 billion.
To that end, Metra had asked the surface transportation board to include trackage rights for Metra as a condition for approval of the merger. But instead the board just urged CN to “negotiate reasonable commercial agreements concerning the STAR line.”
“Clearly we would have liked to have seen formal language requiring CN to work with Metra on its use,” Pagano told Pyke.
But he says CN is open to discussions. “Separate tracks could cause problems for us both,” Pagano said, adding that CN has agreed to talk about track sharing first.
That’s a hopeful sign. As Pyke and Pagano pointed out, it may be beneficial to Metra if the regional rail agency can piggyback on CN’s plans to add more track and spend $100 million to improve the line.
“We all understand there has to be more track built. Now we’re looking at what additional infrastructure needs to be built to accommodate us and them. It’s not rocket science.”
Perhaps not. CN could build some goodwill by working with Metra on the project. CN is still battling communities in court over the merger, with Barrington leading the charge and more legal wrangling possibly coming this week.
If CN gets through the courts and is allowed to merge, there will be some healing needed. Working with Metra to get the popular STAR project off the ground is a good first step to showing the region that CN wants to be a good partner with all the communities along its lines – both those who support the railway and those who don’t.