By Erik Potter, The Post-Tribune
epotter@post-trib.com
That congestion is reaching epic proportions. Trains that take one full day to go from Winnipeg to Chicago take another full day to get from one side of Chicago to the other.
Chicago's CREATE program, a more than $1.5 billion series of improvement project designed to relieve rail congestion, estimates that the Chicago region will lose out on 17,000 jobs and $2 billion in annual economic production in 20 years if the congestion problem is not addressed.
The CN purchase of the EJ&E will not make a large dent in solving the overall congestion problem, but it will make some progress.
Chicago came out in support of the proposed acquisition earlier this year. CN's plan to shift its rail traffic would help the city eliminate rail traffic on the aging, undersized St. Charles Air Line on the southern end of downtown, an area targeted for significant redevelopment, especially if Chicago lands the 2016 Olympics.
"Do we know that railroad expansion, overall, is good? The answer is yes," said Amlan Mitra, economics professor at Purdue University Calumet and member of the Executive Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the railroad business, bigger means better, or at least cheaper. Bringing a small, 200-mile long railroad under the control of an international corporation with 20,000 miles of track intent on maximizing its capacity is a good thing from an economic standpoint. It spreads out the cost of operating the railroad, lowering the cost to the businesses that want to ship their products on it.
"That is a good thing for the farmers if you lower the unit cost (of shipping)," Mitra said. "That's a positive impact to our markets. It makes our companies more competitive."
Brian Steele, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation, says the impact of that is often underappreciated.
"The rail industry has been around for so long, I don't think a lot of people realize how intricately it's linked to so many business in the Chicago region," he said. "It's how retail operations get deliveries of goods, how manufacturers (get products to market). It's not something visible you see out front, but it certainly underpins a lot of what you see in the region."
But that improvement comes at a cost. Increased railroad traffic brings more diesel emissions, more road congestion, more likelihood of car-train accidents, and other social costs.
"There are benefits to railroad expansion, but there are pros and cons," Mitra warns.
Reaction to the local business impact has been a mixture of fear and indifference.
On Broad Street in Griffith -- the most affected town in Lake County -- Jerry Clemons, owner of Dynamite Music, said the increased train delays might force him to close as it becomes more difficult for customers to get into and out of his business.
Others, like Ben Mollin at Bang Bang Beauty & Boutique down the street, see the snarled traffic as a big annoyance.
"I book on the half hour and 45 minutes, and if someone is over there stuck behind a half-hour train, yeah, that's a problem."
Two doors down, Ed Leep, owner of American Natural Resources Inc., expects, if anything, that increased delays will give people more time to look at his storefront while they're waiting for the train to pass.
Factoring in these social impacts is the goal of legislation pending in Congress.
The responsibility of the federal agency responsible for reviewing CN's proposed purchase, the Surface Transportation Board, is to protect the vibrancy of America's freight industry.
The new bill would require the board to balance the benefits to rail with the costs to the community when making its rulings.
"To me, as an economist, that is the bottom line," Mitra said. "Without that kind of analysis, it's impossible to make a decision."