(The following story by Erik Potter appeared on the Gary Post-Tribune website on December 10.)
GARY, Ind. — The rumbles of disappointment with the government’s environmental study of the proposed sale of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co. keep growing.
In a Washington, D.C., news conference, a coalition of northern Illinois members of Congress criticized the federal Surface Transportation Board’s Environmental Impact Statement that was released Friday, saying that it does not do justice to the safety impact that would result from the sale.
Canadian National Railway Co. is looking to purchase the EJ&E?in order to run train traffic headed through Chicago on the EJ&E track that loops around the city rather than on CN lines that go through the city’s congested core. The move would provide some improvement to the train bottleneck that Chicago has become, where trains can take an entire day to get from one side of the city to the other.
But diverting that traffic would mean big increases in the number and length of trains along the EJ&E, prompting an unprecedented public outcry against the sale to the transportation board.
“I find it absolutely insulting to acknowledge the safety concerns (of emergency personnel), and the only recommendation is to put up cameras (at train crossings) so those professionals can say, ‘Oh, it’s blocked, so I can’t get there,'” said Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill.
On this side of the state line, Gary is disappointed at being virtually left out of the report’s mitigation recommendations. Outside of recommended protection for endangered turtles and butterflies, the mitigation list skips over Gary. Nothing is recommended for the EJ&E crossings at 15th Avenue or 5th Avenue — a busy east-west truck route. Nothing is included in the report about potential impact on Gary’s multimillion dollar shoreline development projects.
The report does recommend that CN be forced to comply with the preliminary memorandum of understanding that EJ&E signed with the Gary/Chicago International Airport, but Gary Planning Director Chris Meyers stressed that the preliminary memo is non-binding, stripping that requirement of much meaning.