Railway hubs lay down tracks for expansion

Written by jrood

This city (Chicago) was built on railroads that moved meat from its famous packing houses, steel from its mills, corn from surrounding fields. Today Chicago is still the nation's leading rail hub, with about 37,500 rail cars passing through daily, the Washington Post reports. But massive congestion on Chicago tracks costs millions of dollars in shipping delays, and it causes substantial noise and air pollution as trains idle for hours, waiting for track clearance. The problem threatens to get worse since freight traffic is expected to double in the next 20 years.

With a public-private
partnership and stimulus money, Chicago civic leaders are hoping to unsnarl
their rail traffic and maintain the city’s self-proclaimed status as the
"world’s rail capital." But Kansas City, Mo., the nation’s
second-largest rail hub, is nipping at Chicago’s heels. It is expanding its
intermodal capacity, and a rail line from Kansas City to a seaport in
Michoacan, Mexico, offers a way to bypass U.S. ports.

"We ought to pay more
attention to competitors who are taking advantage of our slow-moving
solutions," said MarySue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning
Council, a Chicago nonprofit agency that advocates sustainable regional
development. Barrett said that about one-third of Chicago’s freight is moving
through to other destinations, a third is produced in Chicago and shipped out
and a third is for local markets.

"The only thing secure
is the stuff that’s got to come here because we’re buying it; we’re not going
to lose that," she said. "The rest of it is potentially threatened if
we don’t continue to move forward on these solutions."

A decade ago, a raft of
constituent complaints about idling trains led Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
to convene a task force to tackle rail congestion. The result is the Chicago
Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE), which
brings together the U.S. Department of Transportation, state and city government
agencies, Amtrak and six of the country’s largest private railroad companies.

"The railroads got
together, which is remarkable in and of itself, in a competitive industry that
doesn’t always have great communication," said Paul Nowicki, assistant
vice president of government and public policy at BNSF. He said the railroads,
which share tracks, were able to reduce congestion initially through better
communication and planning, but soon realized the need for major infrastructure
overhauls.

CREATE calls for 71
projects with a price tag of $2.5 billion. About half a billion has been
secured, including $90 million in earmarks from the 2005-2009 Federal
Transportation Authorization Act. A major focus is eliminating at-grade
crossings, where idling trains block street traffic or other trains. The
Illinois Department of Transportation has applied for $300 million in stimulus
funding for high-speed passenger rail. Stimulus funds are not targeted for
freight rail, but new tracks for passenger trains will clear up existing tracks
for freight.

"Freight is kind of
held hostage by commuter trains," Nowicki said. "As soon as commuter
trains slow down, freight trains emerge from the yards and all night long
they’re crisscrossing Chicago."

Railroads east and west of
the Mississippi River are separate systems, with tracks privately owned by
different companies on each side. Cargo is typically unloaded and transferred
to trucks or other trains in Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City or smaller hubs.
Kansas City handles fewer rail cars but more tons of freight than Chicago,
since it is a major destination for grain, coal and other heavy bulk
commodities.

If Chicago does not clear
up its rail congestion, it stands to miss the opportunity for 17,000 new jobs
and $2 billion in annual economic production within two decades, according to CREATE.
Association of American Railroads spokesperson Holly Arthur said the group
deems every project identified by CREATE as "vital to improving the
competitiveness and efficiency of business not just in Chicago, but also across
the entire country."

Meanwhile in metropolitan
areas including Chicago, rail companies are looking to far-flung suburbs for
new intermodal distribution facilities. Union Pacific is constructing the
country’s largest intermodal facility adjacent to an existing BNSF facility
about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. BNSF is also planning a major new
intermodal location outside Kansas City, Kan. Corporate and civic planners have
promised thousands of jobs and an influx of tax dollars. But in Kansas and
Illinois, residents are concerned about air pollution, traffic and the nature
of the jobs. In Kansas, the Gardner city council voted down the BNSF proposal
amid residents’ fears of the impact on nearby homes and schools. But an
adjacent town is annexing the land so the proposal can go forward.

"They make it sound
like well-paying blue-collar jobs, but in reality these are $8-an-hour,
temporary jobs with no benefits," said Mark Meinster of the United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America union, which is organizing
Chicago area intermodal warehouse employees. "And these are small
communities, where a facility like this creates quite a bit of
disruption."

BNSF’s planned Kansas facility
is currently stalled for lack of financing, but the state has applied for $50
million in stimulus money that would jump-start the project.

Chris Gutierrez, president
of the nonprofit development agency Kansas City SmartPort, sees increasing
import-export activity from Kansas City Southern Railway’s tracks directly to
the Lazaro Cardenas port in Michoacan, Mexico, a route that avoids Long Beach,
Calif., and other often-congested U.S. ports. The Mexican port recently
expanded its capacity fourfold to handle 2 million containers a year, though
that is still dwarfed by California ports.

"We are seeing a
strong push of companies and railroads looking at Kansas City as a viable
option due to congestion in the other markets like Chicago," Gutierrez
said. "There’s a joke that you can move freight from L.A. to Chicago
faster than from one side of Chicago to another. Chicago will always be the
dominant gateway of the U.S. But I hope they feel challenged."

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