(The following appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on February 25, 2011.)
CHICAGO — Funding is in jeopardy for construction of a major rail-bridge system to ease at least some of the freight and passenger train congestion in the Chicago region, officials warned Thursday.
The argument against building the Englewood flyover bridges on Chicago’s South Side at one of the nation’s busiest railroad junctions has nothing to do with the merits of the project.
Instead, the long-planned bridge is among billions of dollars worth of infrastructure improvements that are being threatened by the battle playing out in Congress over the soaring national debt.
Democratic Illinois lawmakers said Thursday they will fight a move by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives that scrapped funding for the Englewood bridges, which are designed to increase rail capacity and eliminate a bottleneck that officials say causes thousands of hours of delays each year for Metra and Amtrak riders as well as bogging down freight traffic. Republicans contend the cuts must be made to slow the growth of the national debt.
The full story appears on the Chicago Tribune website.