Tag: holland

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.

Related Links

Tracking Livestock to Limit Diseases

Those worried about food safety say it’s time for a uniform animal identification system – one that could rapidly isolate animals suspected of carrying contagious diseases. Wisconsin agriculture officials have taken the lead on this type of preventative action but will need the help of all the Great Lakes states to make it work. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Jo Wagner has more:

Transcript

Those worried about food safety say it’s time for a uniform animal identification system, one that could rapidly isolate animals suspected of carrying contagious diseases. Wisconsin AG officials have taken the lead on this type of preventive action but will need the help of all the Great Lakes States to make it work. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Jo Wagner has more.


There’s growing consensus among agricultural officials that some type of universal animal identifier is needed to trace animals from birth to the marketplace. Especially in light of recent occurrences of “mad cow” and “foot and mouth” diseases in live animals overseas and the nasty form of e coli in meat products here. Wisconsin secretary of agriculture, Jim Harsdorf says the ID system started in Europe. Now it’s moved to Canada, where it’s mandatory, and Harsdorf says Holland has a central database containing information on all the nation’s animals.


“It’s housed in one location and the producers within 48 hours have an animal ID’d after it’s born and that animal ID stays with it for life.”


Federal officials in the United States have been slow to implement such a system though, so Harsdorf says state officials are working to come up with one. It might be tied to different identification networks that farmers already use to keep production and reproduction records, herd health, vaccinations and the location of cattle that are sold, or it could be a totally new system that keeps some or all of those records on one central computer database managed by state, private or non-profit organizations.


Wisconsin state veterinarian Clarence Siroky says public feedback surprised them. State officials were expecting farmers to want only a voluntary system but what they found at public meetings was that producers want a more comprehensive mandatory system nationwide


“We move cattle all over the United States rapidly…we can have one cow at least touch 27 other states within a week…one pig can touch 19 other states within 24 hours.”


For those reasons, Siroky says, all animals will have to be included, not only cows, but sheep, horses and pigs. In England for example, cows are identified, but sheep are not, and he says sheep were implicated in the rapid spread of foot and mouth disease there.


That concerns Ted Johnson. He’s a Wisconsin dairy farmer who likes the idea of a universal identification system because it would quickly pinpoint the location of animals that might have come in contact with a disease.


“If in the event of an outbreak of some highly contagious disease, it could be stopped very quickly and we wouldn’t have to have wholesale slaughtering of cattle.”


Still Johnson says many farmers are concerned about how much the ID would cost, who would maintain the records, and who would have access to them.


“The worst case scenario would be if that information is released and there is some doubt about the information or if the information is used in an incorrect manner, the perception can be there’s a problem on individual farms.”


State veterinarian Clarence Siroky says that’s why input from farmers, processors, privacy advocates and consumers is important as the technology is developing.


Still to be decided is the type of animal ID that would be used. Siroky says it could be a tag placed on the animal’s ear. However, some animals already have so many different ear tags, he says one ear can look like a Christmas tree. Other possibilities include a computer chip or other type of recyclables monitor placed inside an animal.


Meanwhile, AG secretary Harsdorf says the records included in a computerized type of system could be very beneficial to consumers at the supermarket.


“At some point in time, you’re gonna have the ability to go through a grocery store and see up on a screen when you buy that package where it came from, a picture of the operation — it’s almost mind boggling to see what could happen down the road.”


Still, farmer Ted Johnson worries all the talk right now about the need for animal identification might create a consumer backlash.


“I feel as a producer our food supply is very safe. I don’t want the perception to be that an animal ID program is being instituted because we have a problem.”


But a potential problem without plans to deal with it could create havoc for the agricultural industry, and so far veterinarian Siroky doesn’t know when a system with wide support might be in place. He does say animal health officials are on high alert for the appearance of any contagious diseases. At the same time, he says even if Wisconsin comes up with a proactive plan, unless other states adopt a similar identification method, any tracking system would have limited effectiveness. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Jo Wagner.