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Company seeking Chicago bypass to hold public hearings
yea, when pigs fly.
Nice map, thank you.
this will definitely reveal some of rail traffic that Chicago has with all of the railroads in it.
The colored dots seem to represent interchange points. The color coding seems to be:
orange: UP lt blue: CN dk blue: CSX lt green: BNSF dk green: NS pink: CP red: Wisconsin Southern yellow: Illinois Railway.
Is this a piecing together of existing track and or right of way or is it virginal? Or, a combination of both?
It would be interesting to know if they have actually got potential commitments from class 1’s to interchange or if this remains speculative.
Intriguing concept, but I just don’t see how it would be economically viable. These are all extremely rough guesstimates on my part so anyone familiar with the project pro-formas feel free to counter them but just for fun…….Let’s say there’s about 500 freight trains a day into/out of Chicago and say 20% of them don’t terminate, get ramped/de-ramped or need to be yarded in the actual metro area. That leaves 100 trains daily of which let’s say the railroads decide to put 80% over the new route (not all of them get rerouted to GLB as Class I’s will have excess capacity on their own city routes if GLB was built….besides, more unit coal traffic passing through Chicago is likely to go away which would free up space). This means there will be about 40 through trains a day each way running on the GLB (80 total). Let’s say the railroads agree to pay $1.00 a car mile for trackage rights over the route (which is a really high number as far as trackage rights go, but for grins, let’s say GLB is such an attractive route, you can justify paying a high premium). Say these through trains average 130 cars and travel across GLB an average of 150 miles between the various connections (very few would travel the full length). 1301.0015080365 = $569.4 million in annual trackage revenue. Let’s also assume ancillary revenue is generated from AAR car repair, utility easements across the right of way etc. and maybe it develops some on-line business to originate/terminate. Not that many industries want to locate in IL these days given the state’s problems, but let’s say somehow it attracts 36K cars a year of on-line business (a really big stretch in the early years) at an average of $1,000 a car ($36M). If this property will take at least $6 billion to build (and likely much more than that) and it only GROSSES something less than $700m per year before deducted operating costs, taxes, depreciation, etc and the expected Cost of Capital for railroading is an 11% annual return. How can the economics possibly work??? Charge
How about relieving traffic in Chicago by upgrading the TP&W? It wouldn’t help with the traffic coming down from Wisconsin, but it would still help a lot and probably could be not a lot faster and for less money. Routing more traffic on the old Wabash to Kansas City has potential too. Perhaps NS and KCS could form a directional running agreement between KC and Springfield, IL, which would drastically increase capacity on this portion. Finally, Iowa Interstate can get to Blue Island and interchange with the eastern railroads. While this doesn’t totally avoid Chicago, it can avoid much of it.
Looks like they’re trying to reinvent the 1915-era Chicago, Milwaukee & Gary (which ended up as part of the Milwaukee, and is now mostly if not entirely abandoned).
Mr. Jamrus hit the nail on the head.
Anything to divert traffic from Chicago, with its Progressive-union-NIMBY stranglehold on the railroads is a good thing.
It is easy for say anything to divert traffic from Chicago is a good thing when it’s not your land being considered for this route as is mine.
CP should support/fund this instead of trying to buy NS for the purported purpose of controlling the IHB, which they cannot do even if they do succeed in merging NS, as detailed by Keith Robbins from Missouri in a comment in this article: http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2016/03/10-cpns-support-letters .
I can imagine this being done piecemeal, with the southern section being done first, followed by segments up into Wisconsin if they’re deemed necessary. I can also see tremendous obstacles to this, like no Class I allowing it to cross at grade, meaning every junction would be a flyover/under with interchange tracks being located at least several hundred yards away, greatly increasing land acquisition and construction costs.
I guess my thoughts, First why not just fund the key parts of CREATE. Especially the ones involving 75th street corridor I believe. Second, When BNSF/Buffet buys an eastern road which forces UP to do something big changes the whole Chicago picture changes. Finally, as James noted, how in heck is the financially viable without a bucket load of public money which leads me right back to less costly CREATE that would benefit Metra/Chicago commuters as well as Midwest corridor trains in and out of Chicago directly
I can hear the NIMBYS warming up already…
Watched a presentetion on this last year. I beleave a lot of this is privately funded. The various points where they cross other railroads would be flyovers not diamonds. I seem to recall they are not planning to run locos, just rent track time to the class ones. They would do local switching but not haul trains. They talked about having enough area to do up to 5 or 6 tracks ?? if needed. Almost all new right of way with no road crossings anywhere. Been too long for my old brain to remember much.
Does any of this route use existing or prior right of ways?
I don’t know why this company or organization is still pushing this concept, since the railroads generally have said that they are not interested in using this line. With the general decline in railroad business right now, and continuing progress in CREATE, this plan is unnecessary.
Boyd,
As I recall the only existing is at the east end south of Chicago or in Indiana don’t recall exactly. They plan to build all new, all grade seperated, very little town interference staying out side of almost all of them. The concept is very interesting but as Paul Arden states the traffic levels are way off. As I stsaed before, I beleave this is a private enterprise and is not taking $$$ from CREATE.