Blueprint America — with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — in a two part report looks at the bottlenecks of America’s freight rail network, and the communities the trains intersect.
In the Midwest, Chicago has been a freight rail hub for around 150 years. In the old days, some lines brought raw materials to the city –- like cattle to the stockyards –- while others carried finished products to market. The city’s rails are still laid out that way: a couple of lines come in from the west and a couple of others from the east. Even though Chicago still handles about a third of the nation’s freight, a lot of it has to stop there -– wait there –- and shift from one railroad to another.
As a result, traffic on Chicago’s rails is even slower than traffic on its roads: A 2002 study found that freight trains pass through the city at an average of just nine miles an hour.
At the same time, the community of Barrington, IL, an outlying suburb in the Chicago area, has had freight re-routed to pass through the city. Residents are not too happy. Still, the shift in train traffic is likely to lessen the congestion of freight in the City of Chicago.
And while the City of Chicago, railroads, and federal authorities have developed a plan to ease freight train traffic, it won’t be complete for years. As a result, the freight carrier Canadian National did what it could and moved some of its trains away from the metropolitan area.
Correspondent Rick Karr reports.
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04/21/2009 :: 06:49:42 PM
John Alan Roderick Says:
One way in which government can stimulate investment by private rail freight companies is to minimize taxation on investment or create tax-free “transport” bonds similar to municipal or state bonds.