(The following article by Jon Davis was posted on the Chicago Daily Herald website on December 20.)
CHICAGO — The Chicago area will lose its status as North America’s freight capital unless a better way is found to move trucks and freight around the six-county region.
Today, trains crawl at an average of 9 mph over the area’s freight rails, road congestion costs businesses, commuters and truckers more than $4 billion annually, and it’s getting worse, according to a new study of the region’s road and rail system.
Unless local governments act together to modernize and expand the roads and railroads that move freight, “we will forfeit the region’s status as the nation’s freight hub,” states a new report from Chicago Metropolis 2020.
While nothing happens here, other cities are developing regional freight plans, said James LaBelle, Chicago Metropolis 2020’s deputy director and former Lake County Board chairman.
“That’s what worries us,” he said.
The report, “Delivering the Goods,” calls for closer coordination of transportation and land-use planning, and designating and protecting existing suburban industrial areas from encroaching residential development.
For example, the report notes 16 suburban industrial areas – including some in the Northwest suburbs and DuPage and Lake counties – create 362,000 jobs, $87 billion in annual sales and millions in local tax revenue, yet are not given any special legal protection.
“Chicago’s suburbs also lack any means of ensuring that public and private industrial development investments are targeted to and coordinated in such corridors,” the report said.
The report, to be released today, suggests creating planning groups within each county, controlled equally by the county and its municipalities, to create and implement countywide freight plans and truck routes.
A revamped freight system would mean more jobs, less traffic congestion and a better overall quality of life, the report said, citing New York City, Seattle and Los Angeles-Long Beach as metropolises already ahead of Chicago in planning better regional freight systems.
Los Angeles and Long Beach, for example, built and opened a $2.4 billion below-street-level freight rail corridor from seaports to inland terminals where containers are loaded onto trucks and other trains.
The report also encourages setting aside land for future industrial growth, more freight movement by rail and elimination of gaps in the area’s truck route system.
Frank Beal, executive director of Chicago Metropolis 2020, said today’s system, in which each town sets its own truck routes, doesn’t work.
Unless there is better coordination to create rational, regional truck routes, truck traffic will get worse, Beal said.
“Truck traffic is increasing exponentially,” he added. “Much faster than cars.”
Beal said a $1.5 billion plan to untangle the region’s freight rail bottlenecks and modernize 25 busy grade crossings is a good start.
But it’s on hold until Congress passes the overdue transportation bill, he said, adding even if that plan is approved, more action is required.
Chicago Metropolis 2020 is a nonprofit group created in 1999 by The Commercial Club of Chicago to promote long-term planning and better regional cooperation in the six-county Chicago metropolitan region.