(The following story by Richard Wronski appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on March 23.)
CHICAGO — Metra and the Canadian National Railway Co. are at loggerheads over the railroad’s $400 million plan to divert freight traffic around Chicago, a proposal that also puts suburbs at odds with each other and with the City of Chicago over train congestion and blocked railroad crossings.
In documents filed with federal regulators, Metra says Canadian National’s plan has the potential for “major disruptive delays in commuter rail service, which would have devastating effects on the riding public,” while the rail company vows to work with Metra to “reasonably address and accommodate its concerns.”
Metra is asking regulators to impose several conditions on Canadian National’s proposed purchase of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway that Metra says are needed to protect its on-time service, schedules on current lines and future expansion.
The conditions include giving Metra control over key junctions along the line and confining freight operations to off-peak hours.
But Canadian National strongly objects and says those conditions would cause “serious and immediate harm to the future of freight service” in the Chicago area, according to a recent filing with the federal Surface Transportation Board.
Furthermore, the rail company says Metra’s conditions are beyond the scope of the board’s authority and that disputed issues should be resolved through negotiations between the two rail entities.
The transportation agency is reviewing Montreal-based Canadian National’s $300 million bid to purchase the EJ&E’s 198-mile arc of tracks running from Waukegan to Joliet to Gary. Canadian National plans to upgrade the lightly-used EJ&E, at a cost of $100 million, so its trains can bypass Chicago’s heavily congested rail corridor. Experts say it can take a day or two for trains to pass through Chicago.
The Canadian National plan has a raft of supporters, particularly businesses, other railroads, the City of Chicago and communities where train volume would be reduced.
But many suburbs along the arc, including Mundelein, Barrington and Frankfort, are opposed to more noise and trains at their grade crossings.
In its filing with the transportation board, Metra said Canadian National’s plan to use the EJ&E line would be detrimental to the commuter line’s proposed STAR line and SouthEast Service, and could potentially create a “rail traffic nightmare” of congestion on two existing commuter routes, the Union Pacific West and Northwest Lines, which Metra hopes to expand.
Despite the differences between both sides laid out in filings from each side, both Metra and Canadian National on Friday acknowledged efforts to negotiate a resolution of the issues.
“We believe we’ll be able to successfully address Metra’s concerns,” Canadian National Vice President Karen Phillips said, although she said the two sides hadn’t met since January.
Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said, “We already have a working relationship with the CN and we will continue to work with them and talk.”
Metra has long planned to use the EJ&E’s right-of-way for its proposed suburb-to-suburb STAR line that would connect Metra’s 11 rail lines.
Metra says an estimated fourfold increase of Canadian National freight traffic on the EJ&E could “severely threaten” commuter rail operations at rail junctions with Union Pacific tracks carrying Metra trains in West Chicago and Barrington.
In addition to control over the junctions, Metra wants a curfew on freight operations during Metra’s peak periods of operations and priority for its commuter trains during non-peak times.
Canadian National, in its documents, says it remains committed to working cooperatively with Metra to “reasonably address and accommodate its concerns.”
Canadian National said the $1 billion STAR line “has not been shown to be feasible or cost-effective, is in its earliest conceptual phases or engineering, and lacks funding at every level—federal state and local.”
The Surface Transportation Board serves as both an adjudicatory and a regulatory agency, with authority over rate and service issues and rail transactions.
Robert Gallamore, a former director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center, said the board has the power to grant conditions like the ones Metra is requesting. But he would not speculate on what the board would do in this case.