Traffic. It's a growing nuisance throughout the Chicago region. Especially for business owners whose employees must commute from long distances, and for industries that ship packages and goods, since costs rise as gridlock worsens.
A major contributor to our gridlock is an antiquated surface freight transportation system, combined with dramatic growth in containerized, intermodal shipping. Containers of goods move from ocean-going ships, to trucks or railcars for cross-country passage, then back to trucks for delivery.
The Chicago region is the rail hub of North America, but once the goods get here, they crawl through at average train speeds of only 6.8-12 m.ph. The problem stems from Chicago's century-old rail switching yards, which were not designed to handle the container traffic that's moving an ever-increasing volume of cargo across the region (some 3,500 truck trips are required daily just to move freight containers between intermodal yards that lack steel-wheel connections).
This leads to semi-trailers clogging streets for miles around railyards as they move back and forth and on to their destinations. Perhaps you've been stuck in a long line of cars, stopped for an interminable time at a grade crossing as a train backs into a switching yard half a mile away. Or perhaps you've noticed the barely moving wall of trucks that forms every weekday along the Interstate 80/94/294 corridor.
Intermodal freight volumes are expected to grow 80 percent by 2020. We face the potential of an economic boon: the industry now brings $8 billion in gross value of economic activity to the region, including more than 117,000 jobs and a $3.2 billion annual payroll. Clearly, we have a huge incentive to improve the intermodal freight system — both to leverage the economic benefits it can bring, and to accommodate its inevitable growth before gridlock consumes the region.
Enter Business Leaders for Transportation. This coalition representing more than 10,000 employers across the region, co-led by the Metropolitan Planning Council, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and Chicago Metropolis 2020, has been studying freight since 2000, when they convened a groundbreaking regional freight conference. That led to the formation of a Freight Transportation Working Group composed of shipping industry executives, their customers, government transportation officials and experts from the research and nonprofit sectors. They met four times last year, and their work identifying key problems and refining potential solutions culminated in the release in April of Critical Cargo: A Regional Freight Action Agenda.
The report takes readers on a historical tour of the present situation, and provides hard (and dire) data on projected growth in the industry (one example: both daily intermodal truck movements and daily freight cars moving through the region are projected to nearly double by 2020). Fortunately, the report also proposes some innovative solutions:
1) Organize public/private support for a package of priority capital improvements to the region's freight network that will expand capacity, lessen gridlock and support job expansion. These include establishing a joint-use freight corridor to allow a significant portion of freight traffic to bypass the most congested parts of the region, after investigating the now underutilized Elgin, Joliet and Eastern (EJ&E) Railway and other corridors prioritized by the industry. Other infrastructure priorities: replacing with grade separations the 40 worst at-grade crossings (where trains pass through at street level) in the region, and upgrading the region's 55 miles of crucial intermodal connector highways (the local streets and highways that semis travel on to move goods between railyards and interstate highways).
2) Secure $20 million in federal funding support over the next year to cover the public portion of planning the above freight investments and position the region for significant public investments.
3) Establish, by state legislative action, a public/private regional freight entity to plan, coordinate and help finance improvements to the region's freight transportation system.
Sound ambitious? There has already been notable progress. Just the fact that the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company, CSX Corp., Canadian National Railway Company/Illinois Central Railroad, Union Pacific Corp. and Norfolk Southern, among others, have agreed to work together is remarkable in a historically competitive industry.
Also encouraging is the legislative attention that has been focused on the issue. In April, Business Leaders for Transportation presented its findings to an Illinois House Transportation Subcommittee hearing in Springfield convened by Ill. Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston). Also in April, Federal Railroad Administrator Alan Rutter, of the U.S. Department of Transportation visited the region to gather data on freight issues in the region at the request of U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).
Why should public monies be spent to benefit a private industry? The benefits go far beyond the railroad and trucking industries. Reducing traffic congestion affects everything from average commute times to employee retention to air quality. And all parts of the region would benefit from the 150,000-plus jobs that the industry is projected to bring by 2020. In the past, federal transportation investments have been lopsided, with the overwhelming bulk of funds being spent on road projects. Now's the time for more equitable distribution of federal transportation monies. Plus, Business Leaders doesn't think taxpayers should bear the burden solely — Critical Cargo calls for a public-private partnership, wherein the railroads contribute through user fees to finance development of a freight corridor, for example.
In the past, the Chicago region has frequently been defined by its problems, from organized crime to racial segregation. Now is our chance to take a problem — traffic — that Chicago is quickly becoming infamous for, and turn it into an opportunity for economic growth and a more livable region for all.
