Amtrak’s Chicago Gateway Blue Ribbon Panel offers solutions to rail gridlock

Written by Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor
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The Amtrak panel appointed to find solutions to rail congestion in the Chicago Gateway recommends co-located dispatchers, improved operating practices and projects to prevent $800 billion in impacts from rail gridlock.

 

Bringing together rail traffic control dispatchers now separated by thousands of miles, improved operating practices by Amtrak and other railroads and funding for priority projects already identified in Northern Illinois and Indiana are top recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel appointed by Amtrak in response to massive Chicago Gateway delays to passenger and freight traffic.

The panel, chosen last year by Amtrak President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Boardman, reported its findings with two university and policy groups Oct. 1 in Chicago. The panel released a study it commissioned that shows the Chicago congestion problem creates an economic vulnerability of up to $799 billion every year, impacting six key industries constituting 85 percent of U.S domestic product.

The named industries are agriculture and natural resources, automotive, manufacturing, retail and services. The panel says the congestion challenge in Chicago poses the largest potential economic vulnerability to the U.S. economy of all the major rail hubs in the United States and industry observers have referred to Chicago as America’s “rail traffic speed bump.”

“The panel interviewed experts with the freight rail industry, Metra commuter rail, the states of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan and others and the verdict was unanimous: The implications of failing to act are dire for the economy of the nation in general and the Chicago area in particular,” Boardman said.

“It’s the busiest rail hub because all the major railroads run through that hub and all the commodities that we think of: grain, crude oil, coal, manufacturing goods, intermodal, all of that’s moving through Chicago,” said Linda Morgan of Washington, D.C., a panelist who was the first chair of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board.

“If something doesn’t happen, transportation experts are going to figure this out. Now it may be leaving the Midwest, it may be opening ports on the east coast and transferring it other ways. It’s a huge risk to the Midwest, but it’s affecting the country,” said Tom Carper of Macomb, Ill., a panel member and an Amtrak Board member.

“Our customers deserve to have on-time performance on their trains, so that’s number one,” Boardman continued. “We’re also looking for a consistent solution; we don’t want to run into this every year, two years or five years.”

Boardman accepted the panel’s recommendations and said Amtrak will continue to make certain it operates effectively in hopes other carriers will take similar steps. He offered space in Chicago Union Station for a dispatching facility to bring together the rail dispatchers now scattered from Chicago and the suburbs to Texas, Nebraska and Minnesota.

“Get Amtrak, Metra and the freight rail operators together in one room so that they’re operating and coordinating and making all those trains run on time,” said Howard Learner of Chicago, a panel member, who is president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “If you had every airline at O’Hare Airport with their own air traffic controller doing everything on their own, it’d be a mess.”

The panel endorsed prioritization of projects designed to improve the flow of passenger and freight trains – but unfunded – in Illinois and Indiana. These include the locations identified as P2 and P3 (75th Street Corridor Improvement Program) and P4 by the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE). The panel cited the completion of CREATE’s P1 project at Englewood as an example and made recommendations for next-steps in the Indiana Gateway Project across the northwest corner of the state and a future dedicated passenger rail route connecting to Michigan and the East.

 

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