CHICAGO — Every day, 460,000 Chicago area motorists waste a total of 11,000 hours sitting at railroad intersections watching trains go by, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The absolute worst intersection in the six-county region is where the CSX rail tracks cross 127th Street in south suburban Blue Island. There 4,615 are halted each day by the crossing gates that descend for a total of 41/2 hours a day.
But the delays are almost as bad at a couple of dozen other rail intersections on Chicago’s South Side, in the south suburbs, and in the west and northwest suburbs of LaGrange, Riverside and Des Plaines.
At the rail crossing in Blue Island, the wait is often so long that when golfers heading home from a nearby club hear the rumble of a slow-moving freight, they turn right around and play another nine holes.
“Their wives don’t argue,” said Blue Island Mayor Don Peloquin. “They know how bad it is.”
The Chicago area’s 30 worst train crossings, as measured by how long and how often motorists get stuck at gates, are ranked in a new study by the Illinois Commerce Commission. The study was requested by Illinois’ congressional delegation to help them decide where to spend federal money on railroad infrastructure. Having figured out which of the metro area’s 1,763 rail-street intersections cause the most delays, however, transportation experts remain at a loss how to fix things. Every conceivable solution–such as running the tracks over a viaduct–is expensive and likely to displace homes and businesses.
Half-hour waits
Many Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs owe their existence, ironically, to the railroads that now strangle them. Over 150 years, factories, shops and bedroom commuter suburbs grew up along the train tracks that rolled out of Chicago like the spokes of a wheel.
But the trains have grown longer over the decades and, especially in crowded urban areas, slowed to a crawl. In Blue Island, trains often stretch more than 1-1/2 miles and creep slowly uphill out of a nearby freight yard, said Mayor Peloquin, a lifelong resident whose father worked for the railroad. Equally long trains rolling into the freight yard often grind to a halt as their cars are shuffled and sorted.
Half-hour waits for a train to move are not uncommon and, as a result, life in Blue Island can take on a frustrating rhythm.
“It seems like even when you’re walking the dog you’ve got to wait for the train,” said Blue Island resident Pauline Bialek. “You have to arrange your whole day around these trains. You really can’t be in a hurry around here.”
As in Blue Island, many of the worst rail crossings are near rail yards. The Belt Railway crossings east of Midway Airport, for example, feed into a yard in nearby Bedford Park.
“It’s very frustrating when these trains stop traffic out there during rush hour,” said Ald. Michael Zalewski of the Southwest Side’s 23rd Ward, where many of the Belt Railway crossings are located.
With 16 rail crossings in the ward, Zalewski said, the problem will never go away “until we get a grade separation at a couple of major intersections.”
An expensive roadblock
West suburban Franklin Park scrambled for nearly two decades to put together $30 million to construct an underpass at its worst rail crossing, at Grand Avenue. The village managed to pry some money loose from this and that state or federal agency, but the whole project looked hopeless until the Federal Highway Administration finally came through with a $11.8 million grant. “It was very discouraging at times,” said Franklin Park Mayor Dan Pritchett. “We were ready to throw in the towel.”
Meanwhile, until the new underpass is completed in about three years, the village continues to pay the price of being divided, sometimes for a dangerously long time, by trains sitting on the tracks.
“We have 60 police officers and three fire stations–those are big numbers for a town that’s four miles square,” Pritchett said. “They’re here because of trains that dissect this community.”
Of the 30 worst crossings, only the Franklin Park crossing and one other–130th and Torrence in Chicago–have received funding to help fix the problem.
Even when money is not an obstacle, not every town can put in an underpass or viaduct.
“Aside from the cost, putting grade separations into downtown Des Plaines or Wilmette would have a horrendous community impact,” said David Schultz, director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University. “You would have a bunch of mini-Great Walls of China cutting these downtowns in half.”
Franklin Park had to condemn several factory, office and commercial properties to get started on its Grand Avenue project in an industrial part of town. Pritchett says the town would never consider such an alternative in the downtown business district, but they are looking at a pedestrian bridge.
Less dramatic solutions to the problem, Schultz said, would be to change operating procedures in rail yards so that trains move in and out faster, blocking traffic for less time. Yards could automate their car switching system or add more track.
“It can also be a simple issue of operational carelessness. It may be more convenient for the railroads or they just don’t care or appreciate the impact that they’re causing in the communities,” Schultz said. “But I think there’s less and less of that over time.”
CSX spokesman David Hall says the railroad has tried to reduce delays at critical crossings, and has been working since 2000 to solve the problem in Blue Island by adding a third main track into the nearby Riverdale yard. When it’s finished, he said, “the results will be better train speeds and additional efficiencies in our operations.”
Paul Nowicki, vice president of governmental and public policy at Burlington Northern Santa Fe, said Chicago area railroads have poured $500 million of their own money into infrastructure improvements over the last three years. He added that Chicago is the only city in the nation where experts from each railroad share an office to coordinate their operations.
Ticketing trains
A 1999 state law allows towns to fine railroads if a train remains stopped at an intersection for more than 10 minutes. So far this year, north suburban Mundelein has issued more than $50,000 in tickets to the Canadian National Railroad.
“We’re trying to get them to cooperate,” said Mundelein Police Chief Ray Rose, “but in some instances I think they believe it’s easier to pay the fine rather than cut back on train movements or reschedule what they’re doing.”
Melrose Park Police Chief Vito Scavo says this kind of stepped-up enforcement of the law seems to be working. “It definitely has gotten better,” he said. “They’re still a lot of trains, maybe they’re slow-moving, but stopping has improved.”
Researcher Steve Laffey used federal and state data on train frequency, highway traffic, train lengths and speeds. He also took information downloaded from event recorders at selected crossing gates. Laffey’s full study is posted at the ICC’s Web site: www.icc.state.il.us.