Railway Track & Structures - February 2009 - (Page 48)

CHICAGO PERSPECTIVE After CN/EJ&E T he Surface Transportation Board approved CN’s acquisition of EJ&E on Christmas Eve. In my opinion, that was a great holiday gift to both the railroad industry and to the entire Chicago region. I know some communities, especially one not far from my hometown in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, must feel they got a big lump of coal in their stockings, but I think they are wrong. CN itself is somewhat taken aback by the extra tens of millions of dollars it must spend to meet conditions imposed by the STB. If both parties are somewhat unhappy, then maybe it’s a very good decision, after all. I do know it’s a vital decision. Chicago is far and away the rail hub of the nation. No place else even comes close. If you ship by rail, or use a product that’s shipped by rail, the fluidity of the Chicago rail infrastructure is important to you, whether you realize it or not. Today, railroads are trying to squeeze 21st Century traffic through a system built for early 20th Century loads. It just doesn’t work. We’ve all heard the horror stories about cargo from the West Coast that took longer to get through the Chicago Gateway than it took to make the 2,000-mile journey to Chicago. The economy is experiencing some rough times at the moment and that will mean less rail traffic than in the past few years. But I’m supremely confident that this is only a glitch that will right itself within the next year or two. Freight traffic in this nation is going to balloon to virtually unimaginable numbers. How will we handle it? How can we keep traffic flowing as traffic totals skyrocket? Railroads are going to have to play a major role in moving traffic. There’s no way they will be able to do it if they have to rely on the outmoded infrastructure of the Chicago area, the industry’s key gateway. EJ&E is underutilized. It makes good sense to use the track that’s already in existence to ease some of the horrible congestion problems that exist. And CN is spending its own money, not asking for government funds to get the job done. I can look at potential problems and sympathize with those who battled the acquisition. But I think their tactics were badly mistaken. In my opinion, opponents spent far too much time and effort trying to demonize the railroad and little or no time and effort looking at the big picture and trying to ameliorate the situation. If I had heard one more official talking about that foreign railroad coming in to steal American jobs, I would have screamed. Instead of using their clout to beat on the railroad and get it to go away, I think they should have worked to get as much in the way of amelioration as possible. What they couldn’t get from the railroad, they could have leaned on their elected officials to pay for with government funding. It’s all hindsight now, but if they had put as much effort into getting ready for this project with engineered solutions such as grade separations or what have you as they put into demonizing the railroad, they just might have had several “shovelready” projects for the new administration to fund. In that case, the opponents would have gotten a lot of mitigation and the nation would have gained due to improved fluidity in the Chicago rail gateway, a real win-win situation. While I’m on the subject of the Chicago Gateway, I’d like to say a few words about CREATE. As most of you know, this collection of projects in the Chicago area got off to a good start, but funding slowed to a trickle. So the CREATE folks started carrying out projects that could be done quickly and with comparatively little money. Meanwhile, surveying, design and pre-engineering efforts went ahead in anticipation of funding. As a result of all that advance work, CREATE has several projects that are either “shovel ready” or very close to it. We need to get some of those projects going as soon as possible. Few, if any, projects out there would provide as much benefit for the entire nation as easing Chicago-area rail congestion would. All of us in this industry must make sure our elected officials know where infrastructure money can do the most good. And it isn’t always in roads. George S. Sokulski Associate Publisher 48 Railway Track & Structures February 2009 www.rtands.com http://www.rtands.com

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Railway Track and Structures - February 2009 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Railroads Stepping Up Use of Technology to Locate Rail Flaws Rail Lubrication Realizing Great Potential M/W Challenges: Track Settlement at Bridge Approaches Supplier Profiles Products and Literature People Calendar Advertisers Index Sales Representatives Website Directory Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - February 2009

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