Traffic Jam on the Tracks

  • This Canadian National train waits for a signal in South Holland, Illinois. South Holland, like Chicago itself, is criss-crossed with rail lines. South Holland would likely see fewer CN trains move through its town, should CN’s buyout of the EJ & E Railway get federal approval. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

American drivers hate getting stuck
in traffic jams. Well, they don’t get much
sympathy from railroads – they’ve got traffic
jams of their own. There’s one place in
particular where the train’s run so slow it
can take a day to move a train of chemicals,
furniture, and cars just a few miles. One
company tried to buy its way out of the problem.
Reporter Shawn Allee explains how that blew up
into a fight all of us might pay for:

Transcript

American drivers hate getting stuck
in traffic jams. Well, they don’t get much
sympathy from railroads – they’ve got traffic
jams of their own. There’s one place in
particular where the train’s run so slow it
can take a day to move a train of chemicals,
furniture, and cars just a few miles. One
company tried to buy its way out of the problem.
Reporter Shawn Allee explains how that blew up
into a fight all of us might pay for:

If you buy a new car or build a new house, there’s a good chance the stuff to build it
sat in a Chicago-area rail yard for a while. Railroads from the East Coast, the West
Coast, the South, and Canada all converge there. Trains in Chicago compete for
track, so they practically crawl.

Canadian National Railway doesn’t like it, and PR guy Jim Kvedaras, says no one in
America should like it either.

“Everything anybody eats, drinks, wears, lives in, moves by rail somewhere in its
production chain. If we, as the transportation provider, can offer a better service for
customers, the ultimate that contains their cost structure with the ultimate beneficiary
being the consumer.”

Kvedaras says Canadian National has a fix. It would buy a competing rail line that
runs a loop around Chicago. The company would shift trains to that less-congested
track.

The deal needs federal approval, but before that happens, Chicago-area towns are
fighting over it.

Those along the current route tell horror stories of living with too many
trains. Suburbs along the proposed by-pass route don’t want those hassles in their towns.

One place that would benefit by train traffic moving away is South Holland.

Mayor Don DeGraf says a quick car ride shows why he supports the deal.

“We’re approaching the intersection where it’s not at all unusual where we have a
train blockage.”
Shawn Allee: “Speaking of the devil, look right ahead.”

Mayor DeGraf: “It’s right up in front of us. It’s a daily occurrence.”

Allee: “I mean it’s not moving.”

Mayor DeGraf: “No, it’s just standing there. And the reason is very simple: there’s just no place for
these trains to go.”

DeGraf says inconvenience is the least of his worries.

“It becomes almost like the Bermuda Triangle, where you can’t go from one side of
town to the other side of town. So we rely on a neighboring community to give us
additional fire protection for situations like we’re experiencing right now, where a
train’s blocking the crossing.

South Holland is just one of sixty-six towns that could benefit from Canadian National’s buyout of
the by-pass route.

But dozens of towns are fighting the deal. One is Frankfort.

Frankfort gets just a trickle of rail traffic, but it might get four times as many trains
going through town.

Resident Ken Gillette’s backyard is right next to the by-pass route.

“Here I buy a house out here and ten months later, this is gonna go through. I
actually had told me wife, she wanted the house and I says, one day, those tracks
could be sold and there’d be hundreds of trains going by there every week and sure
enough that’s what happened.”

Allee: “Did you guys have some serious discussions after that?”

Gillette: “Oh yeah, not good ones, you know.”

Other Frankfort residents have similar stories. It’s little wonder the town wants the
government to stop Canadian National’s buyout deal.

Mayor Jim Holland says Frankfort’s not just being selfish. He says suburbs will want
protection from traffic hazards, and Canadian National’s offering to pay a fraction of
the cost.

“It’s assumed that the American taxpayer will eventually have to pay for the
overpasses, the extra gates and such that will be put on the railroad. And that’s
mostly United States tax dollars that pay for those.”

There’s no perfect ending to Chicago’s rail traffic mess. Even when companies like
Canadian National want to fix the problem themselves, everyone pays.

We’ll likely pay to soften the blow to towns that will see more trains passing through.
But we also pay higher transportation costs if too many trains sit idle.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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