CREATE about to proceed

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

The long-delayed $1.5 billion CREATE plan to reduce rail congestion in the greater Chicago area will start rolling this year with five initial projects.

The U.S. Department of Transportation this week released $25 million in CREATE funding secured under the 2005 federal transportation act, Earl Wacker of CSX Transportation, told the Northwest Indiana Intermodal Task Force on Friday.

Though there are no specific CREATE projects in Northwest Indiana, it will have a big impact on rail congestion here, Wacker and others said.

CREATE stands for Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency. It is one of three projects of “national and regional significance” in Illinois receiving funding under the federal transportation act.

“If we’re going to have meaningful intermodal development in Northwest Indiana, we need access to Western railroads. So CREATE is critical to making all that work,” said Henry Lampe, president of the Chicago SouthShore and South Bend Railroad.

Rail congestion in Chicago often backs up rail traffic in Northwest Indiana, leaving trains parked on tracks, sidings and crossings.

The intermodal task force is undertaking a short-range freight study to identify infrastructure improvements to ease freight congestion in Northwest Indiana. It could lead to a CREATE-like plan in the region.

The $25 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation is the first money to flow to CREATE from a $100 million earmark for the project. The rest of the money will come in installments in the next three years.

The federal money will leverage $100 million in funding from five major railroads – BNSF Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern Corp. and Union Pacific Railroad.

It will also leverage $30 million from the city of Chicago. The Illinois Department of Transportation will kick in $100 million more. The IDOT portion still needs legislative approval.

2

How long ago did the Canadian Northern bow out? [;)]

I’m not sure whether this “McCook” thing has to do with the IHB/BNSF crossing and connecting tracks (which have little, if anything, to do with the Heritage Corridor) or the IHB/CN crossing at Argo, which doesn’t have that much business. Argo is a grade-separation project, according to CREATE, and the IHB is supposed to get a third main line pretty much throughout. So whatever this is, it’s apparently a “drop-in-the-bucket” thing.

Just saw another article this morning about the DOT starting some “Corridors of the Future” initiative to ease congestion over certain routes. One of the routes was the Interstate 80/90/94 corridor between Illinois and Michigan (their description). But freight and passenger railroads in the area might be looked at as well as highways in this program. I wonder what the specifics are.

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I don’t think that it’s any secret how I feel personally, about spending taxpayer dollars on making private businesses more profitable.

That said, I also see Chicago as somewhat of a unique situation, being such a central junction and exchange point for all the major players. Doing this project (at least parts of it) will be “good” in the same way the Alameda corridor was “good”., so I’ll roll with it.

I have to wonder though, and maybe some of you will volunteer your own perspective. How much of the current entanglement is a side effect of abandonments? (hear me out now )

Back before the mass mergers, consolidations, and abandonments of parallel access, there were many more routes into chicago, meaning the traffic was spread out over more lines.

As Penn-Central became Conrail, Wabash and Nickleplate rolled into NW(S), and C&O and B&O became CSX, routes into Chicago from the east started dropping like flies.

The former Wabash across Northern Indiana…, the Erie… , the C&O from Cincinnati…, the PRR from the Panhandle through Logansport, The former PRR (now CF&E) mainline, and the former Nickle Plate with much of it’s former traffic moved up to the old NYC waterlevel route…there are a lot of paths in and out of chicago that are either gone, or all the remains is a shred of it’s former self.

Hard to imagine that at least a part of the current problem is not the result of the RR’s pursuit of cost efficiency through consolidation, payroll reduction, and abandonment.

Seems like a clever way to get the tax payer to fund strategic improvements that make the former abandonments more “workable” Which seems a tad exploitative to me

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Quote by TheAnitGates:

Maybe from the east, not from the west. Back before the mass mergers, consolidations and abandonments of parallel access Chicago had close to the same infrastructure that it does now! Brighton Park? The only flyover (if you want to call it that) is the Saint Charles Air-Line and the city wants to get rid of it. Chicago handles @500 freight trains a day! Those 500 trains have to fight their way through a maze of old tracks, outdated signal systems, many at-grade crossings, etc. Just because you have more capacity doesn’t mean it’s smarter capacity.

Put the money where it counts. The IHB is big link. It doesn’t surprise me that the IHB is the starting point. Wasn’t the relocation of the IHB north of Norpaul/new bridge over Grand Ave in Franklin Park, IL (featured in March Trains) part of CREATE?

CC

Perhaps the CN bowed out because they’re the only railroad with a straight shot through Chicago?

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Not sure that’s the case, AG.

The big abandonments to the east took place around 4/1/76–“C” day. That’s basically when we lost the EL, the Panhandle, and a few other lines into the city. But traffic continued to slide after that, for several years, and other routes’ traffic was consolidated in a continuing drive to prune excess trackage. But the upturn in traffic, be it post-Staggers, post PRB, post-stack train, or whatever, didn’t come until a few years later, and I kind of doubt that the missing lines would have shared in this increase, no matter what. We’ve had the discussion on the Forums before about whether the railroads would prefer, now that business is booming, to expand along existing lines or bring back the routes they abandoned–it’s practically always been the former.

Then look at CREATE’s corridors. The two that deal most with eastern railroads are the expansion along IHB (and beyond, to the south), and something that would basically give the CN a good connection with itself (and in the process give the western railroads an alternative connection to the existing eastern railroads). These projects, especially the IHB corridor, would be helpful no matter how many eastern routes were funneling into them.

6

Someone will correct or add to this, but it’s a start.

I believe the only significant route abandoned north and west of the city is the old Chicago Great Western.

From the immediate South, though, especially in NW Indiana, they lost mains of Erie Lackawanna, Pennsylvania RR, Chesapeake & Ohio, and Wabash. In eastern Illinois, the old stateline Milwaukee Road line was torn out.

But saying this is a mistake is purely the wisdom of hindsight. These were abandoned during the 1970s when railroads were struggling. Who knew?

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Anti-

It’s not the abandoned routes from the east into Chicago that are needed, but the abandoned routes around Chicago. The eastern half of the Kankakee Belt is covered in the March Trains. The EJ&E Griffith-Porter line, and the NYC Joliet-Chicago Heights-East Gary lines are two others. Just having one of these back would seem useful to me.

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Exactly my point!!

If railroad “A” (trying to keep the point of debate neutral) is allowed to merger with other lines such that it has control of 5 seperate lines into a city, and it abandons two of those (effectively eliminating their competition ni the process)…and then comes back whining that they lack sufficient capacity later, expecting uncle sam to pay for doubling up two of their 3 remaining lines, that seems exploitative to me.

Sort of like Sears asking the govt to help fund their aquisition of Kmart, is the way it looks to me.

OF COURSE the RR’s would prefer to have the capacity nearer it’s other lines, fewer crossing gates to maintain, manicuring ballast becomes more efficient, etc etc. But should it really be the taxpayer’s job to pay to make those efficiencies work out?

Back at the time of the original merger (in this example) Railroad “A” said that acquiring the lines was what they wanted to do.

Perhaps when they shedded the capacity they were more interested in pulling up the spikes on a competing corridor? And are now letting the taxpayer pay to fix the restrained capacity that resulted?

Just a thought.

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I’m not all that familiar with the rail layout in and around Chicago, but it seems to me that nanaimo73 has a much better idea. I know there are politics and more than a century of habit to contend with, but seems much smarter to me to improve one or more of the outer belts than to improve the congested inner lines. It would probably gore way too many sacred cows to ever be feasible, but what about double- or triple-tracking the Kankakee Belt (KB) and doing all the interchange between the railroads it crosses adjacent to the KB? That would take a tremendous number of railcars out of Chicago, and speed up the moves that have to take place closer to the city center. All of the intersecting railroads could own the KB in common and run it as a neutral switching/interchange railroad. Comments, anyone?

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I respect what you are saying. And I’ll admit that hindsight isn’t going to relieve current problems.

But I do think that abandonment has fed the current problem. And I’d imagine that the people living in the towns that lost railservice due to the aforementioned abandonments are just tickled pink over having their tax dollars go towards making the surviving lines more capacity friendly.

Ohh well, etc.

Question: off all the major lines into Chicago from the east, which ones were “shared” for the final few miles?

Didn’t some of the eastern lines just junction up with others in western indiana, and ride the final few miles into Chicago on a toll basis, riding the other’s rails?

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I doubt that people who live in places like LaCrosse, North Judson, and Valpo care one way or another about the railroads being upgraded elsewhere though they may object to taxation for darn near anything. Think they cared about the upgrading of I-80/94?

You may be thinking of the Chicago & Western Indiana, which began at State Line, and carried the trains of Erie, C&O (of Indiana), Monon, and Wabash (from the east) toward Clearing, and their passenger trains (except C&O) to Dearborn Station. Pullman Junction used to be a great train-watching spot along that route.

C&O and Erie were paired from Griffith through Hammond as well (before the 1920s, C&O had its own line through Hammond to a connection with the Michigan Central near Calumet City). The Wabash line joined B&O through East Chicago and Hammond. The C&O Northern Region came in via NYC at Porter, and used B&O west from Pine; both C&O and B&O used the RI line to get to other B&O trackage (another routing through Pullman Junction that barely exists).

Dale, I don’t think there’s anything the EJ&E’s Porter Branch could do today that their two-track line up to Gary can’t handle just as easily.

If Conrail had bought the RI, the old MC line to Joliet might have been useful–for that line only.

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Ohh well, I guess it’s a good thing that the government is paying to build all those underpasses.

That way maybe they will actually see a coat of fresh paint once in a while.

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So why does through rail traffic have to go through Chicago? Aren’t there better routes farther south? Wasn’t there a rail route through Northern Michigan and Sault Ste. Marie?

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Since we are going on almost 30 years since most of the aformention abandonments, I would be willing to bet that most of the people living in said towns have no knowledge that a railroad was even there.

Bert

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It doesn’t. However since most lines are setup to interchange in Chicago, that is the best route to go.

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I always thought so, but I guess that the RR’s only like to complain about how insufferable working through Chicago is, when they can milk the taxpayer for assistance. The obvious truth is that they work through Chicago ONLY because they want to.

If they REALLY wanted to escape the congestion of Chicago, they wouldn’t be letting lines such as the TP&W atrophy, and be abandoning routes like the cloverleaf and the sort.

Some say that the reason why the big western roads won’t hand off in cities like St Louis and KC is because they want maximum haul going all the way to chicago. Probably true. It also proves that hauling into Chicago is not the problem everyone trys to make it out to be. or they would do something about it if it was.

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I have always felt the NS is holding a trump card with their Kansas City - Fort Wayne line. Always have heard the western roads are reluctant to minimize their long haul to Chicago, but at some point, it will have to occur.

When I look at the US railroad map, one line keeps popping up…the aforementioned TPW. At some point, i would guess it will become a valuable property. I can see UP dropping down from Nelson to Peoria to access the line. Also, Edelstein could also have a southern Y so their traffic on the BNSF could drop down to Peoria.

Both of those will probably be years away.

ed

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I think you are almost “there”, but with a slight twist.

I don’t think that most people have the attention span to piece events that transpire 30 years apart, into a cognitive whole.

Shoot, most folks attention span seems to be about 30 seconds for trivial stuff and 90 days for most other things.

There are, however, people in North Judson who miss their trains. I assure you of that

Whether or not they associate that with rail improvements they are being expected to help fund in other areas, is probably where the thought process derails.

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Just part of my own cynical nature, but I suspect that part of the RR’s love affair with Chicago (versus routes around) is the fondness they have for eliminating jobs.

By having as much as possible centralized in the big yards in illinois, by virtue of economies of scale, that’s just that many fewer jobs they need to support than if a portion of those duties are performed in an auxillary yard 120 miles south.

20

The amount of interchange partners as seperate operating entities have dwindled…break bulk terminals have mostly moved out of downtown…lcl is gone…run throughs are up…it’s all about moving automobiles more than train routing in terms of future trends…more mergers ahead may mean more bypassing of Chicago in the future…all of this tax improvement may be like widening the canals as an operating efficency in the 19th century…Who knows maybe Don Phillips is right… all the relocation of intermodal teminals out to the boondocks may ease truck traffic congestion in urban areas and rail loadings will plummet…then we can turn the elevated roadbeds into urban bikeways…as they have on the old NYC West Side Line. It too in it’s day was a great innovation to seperate freight movement from highway traffic…