(The Rockford Register Star published the following column by Chuck Sweeny on its website on August 28.)
ROCKFORD, Ill. — Aboard the Union Pacific?s 12-car business train Wednesday morning, I thought a lot about time, progress and history. At the invitation of Ken Wise, Rochelle’s economic development dynamo, I joined about 200 people going from the UP?s cramped intermodal hub at Northlake, in west suburban Chicago, to Global III, the railroad’s spacious new hub in Rochelle. The hub’s grand opening was Wednesday.
The truck/train terminal is designed to save shippers time, which equals money. That?s as true today as it was when President Abraham Lincoln chartered the UP in 1862. Seven years later, when the UP met the Central Pacific in Utah, the U.S. became a coast-to-coast nation in fact instead of on paper.
The train itself represented history. The Omaha-based Streamliner’s cars advertise the names of famous UP trains, engines and cities along the railroad?s tracks: City of Los Angeles, Challenger, Portland Rose, City of Salina, Katy Flyer, Columbine, North Platte.
Most long-distance passenger trains disappeared in the 1960s because they couldn’t compete with the speed of jet airliners. Sure, riding a train is relaxing and fun, but why take two days to go from Chicago to L.A. when the jet takes four hours? People flocked to the flyin’ tin can.
Then, railroads got lazy with freight, slowing down track speeds and delaying maintenance. Disgusted shippers switched to more expensive but faster trucks. Now, the railroads want fast freight back and are once again emphasizing service, speed and reliability.
The route we traveled Wednesday represented progress. The tracks were jammed with Metra commuter trains and UP freights that passed us every couple of minutes. Metra station parking lots were filled with cars. The commuter railroad is building a station in Elburn, 9 miles west of the current terminus in Geneva. Why? New, cookie-cutter subdivisions and office/industrial parks provide the answer.
A quick jaunt through the few miles of remaining countryside between the burgeoning ‘burbs and Rochelle?s sprawling truck/train port ended too soon to suit the train buffs aboard. According to the UP, Chicago is the world’s third-largest handler of international freight, after Hong Kong and Singapore. But maybe not for long.
Chicago is A victim of too little road and rail infrastructure and too many trains and trucks. Coast-to-coast containers waste one to two days in Chicago. That sluggishness gives a competitive leg up to the slower — but less expensive — all-water route through the Panama Canal, said fellow passenger Matt Guasco, the New York-New Jersey representative of the Port of Los Angeles. Rochelle’s hub should speed such freight by quickly handing off trains to eastern railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Northern Illinois counts on development around the Rochelle site to boost the local economy. As our train slowed and entered Rochelle, the talk was all about what Company X is going to build and what Company Y wants to do. Shaun Gannon, a vice president of Japanese steamship company “K” Line America Inc., predicted some of the company’s customers from Iowa to western Chicagoland will migrate to sites near the UP in Rochelle.
Time, progress, history. All met on a hot and sultry Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2003.