(The following story by Kevin P. Craver appeared on the Northwest Herald website on July 9.)
CHICAGO — A suburban congressman submitted a bill Tuesday in the House that, if successful, would derail Canadian National’s plan to buy the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway.
The bill, drafted by 6th District U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., would allow the secretary of transportation to designate a portion of the railway as a mass-transit commuter corridor. Such a move would save Metra’s hope to implement its Suburban Transit Access Route, and likely kill CN’s $300 million bid to acquire the 200-mile railway to increase freight traffic.
“It would set [the EJ&E] aside for a feeder corridor and would allow the secretary of transportation to propagate rules she thinks are necessary to protect it to ensure that increased freight traffic is not permitted,” Roskam said.
CN’s bid for the railway has been decried by suburban U.S. representatives and leaders of the cities the route cuts through. They say that increased trains – CN estimates anywhere between 15 and 24 a day in certain cities – will lessen quality of life, hurt local business and lengthen emergency response times.
The bill would allow the government to designate the 36 miles of it that Metra wants for the STAR line as commuter rail. Metra announced in 2003 that it wanted to acquire a portion of the EJ&E as part of its 55-mile STAR line.
The proposed line would run from O’Hare to Joliet, connecting 100 towns and four of its 12 existing routes.
CN spokesman Jim Kvedaras said he had not seen the bill, but said that the Montreal-based company had promised Metra that the EJ&E could support both increased freight and a new commuter line.
“CN has already given assurances that we will work with Metra to find a way to meet both their needs and ours should the STAR line move beyond concept,” Kvedaras said. “The Congressman’s bill … appears to be addressing an issue that CN has already committed to.”
But Metra is not counting on those assurances because they have not moved beyond the conversation stage, spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said. Metra opposes the EJ&E’s sale, barring solid conditions in writing that would allow both uses to coexist.
“They’ve assured us through public statements, and they’ve said they are willing to discuss it with us, but we have no assurances that those conditions would be met with the purchase,” Pardonnet said.
The EJ&E, owned by a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp., loops around Chicago from Waukegan to Gary, Ind., cutting through northwest and southern Cook County, and Lake, DuPage and Will counties. It does not cut through McHenry County, but cuts across key entry routes such as Route 14 and Algonquin Road.
About 6 1/2 miles of it runs through Barrington Hills. Village President Robert Abboud, who is running for the 16th Congressional District on the Democratic ticket, said he was pleased that Roskam submitted the bill. Barrington leaders have been vocal opponents of the CN acquisition.
“If we have a freight train, a 10,000-, 12,000-foot freight train running through every 43 minutes, it would be devastating for the community,” Abboud said.
The railway has promised to invest more than $40 million to mitigate traffic and noise problems, a sum that opponents of the purchase said is far from adequate. Abboud said the state’s residents would pick up the remaining tab.
“It’s a foreign corporation that wants to acquire a U.S. asset, and do so on the backs of the U.S. taxpayers,” Abboud said.