How the Chicago plan spells relief: Chicago's planned Passenger Express Corridor—designed by freight as well as passenger interests—will create fluidity for freight routes redesigned to improve rail service in, through, and beyond North America's most congested rail hub

Railway Age, Jan, 2004 by Frank Malone

How do you spell relief in Chicago? Echoing one of the rail industry's most critical concerns, that question recently headed a Norfolk Southern newsletter article about the monumental $1.5 billion Chicago Plan, aka CREATE (Chicagoland Regional Environmental and Transportation Efficiency project). NS said the answer is better routing of passenger trains. Repeat: passenger trains.

That's why a Passenger Express Corridor (PEC) ranks high along with four new or restructured freight corridors in the Plan. With its rail-rail separations creating context for the freight corridors, the PEC is the good story within the great story of the overall plan, which has brought six major freight carriers together in truly historic fashion, along with Chicago's Metra commuter agency, Amtrak, and city and state transportation departments ("The Chicago Plan: Relief at last?", RA, July 2003, p.32).

All parties hope their uniquely unified Heimlich maneuver for the city of the big chokepoints will win a large federal share of still-needed funding. It's the "kind of pragmatic partnership that has focused the attention of lawmakers," said Association of American Railroads President and CEO Ed Hamberger at Railway Age's 2003 "Passenger Trains on Freight Railroads" conference in Washington, D.C. "This is not a subsidy, it's a public/private partnership," he said. That means railroads pay for benefits they receive, while the public pays for such benefits as more efficient commuter service, fewer delays at grade crossings, and less congestion.

Tying together two Metra mutes as a major Plan component stretching nearly 17 miles south and southwest from Chicago Union Station to Chicago Ridge and claiming four of the Plan's six flyovers, the PEC will eliminate (1) Metra-Amtrak-freight interference at a location critical to a major freight rerouting that won the city's endorsement of the overall Chicago Plan; and (2) Metra-freight interference in a segment of the city that claims the most rail intersections of the entire Chicago Terminal District. With two of its flyovers ranking as the most critical--and costly-projects in the entire Plan, the PEC also will contribute directly or indirectly to the fluidity of the other corridors.

Because passenger corridor planners addressed freight issues, Norfolk Southern endorsed the PEC concept. "There are many synergies between Metra's needs and NS's needs, and the NS has approached this in a very positive fashion," says George Hard widge, Metra's chief transportation officer and representative on the Chicago Planning Group (CPG), which reports to the AAR Senior Operating Managers Committee. "Their cooperation recognized the reality that our commuter service is inextricably entwined in the freight system. Norfolk Southern deserves a lot of credit for the design of the passenger corridor and its acceptance by the other carriers."

Hardwidge was a PEC co-designer along with Hugh Kiley, NS assistant vice president-operations and co-chairman of the CPG. "I can't stress enough the partnership with Metra," says Kiley. "They were disciplined and strong-willed but very collaborative in achieving a solution."

Under a protocol worked out four years ago by the freight and passenger members of the then-fledgling Chicago Transportation Coordination Office (CTCO), a CPG subsidiary, passenger trains have priority at all crossings. That can certainly cause freight delays in a district where Metra and Amtrak account for about 60% of 1,200 weekday train movements. If, however, a freight train can't clear a crossing in its slot time because of mechanical problems or yard congestion, passenger trains also suffer, protocol or not.

"Interestingly, as the process evolved, we were able to show, supported by the modeling data, that eliminating Metra's delays was a key to success," says Hardwidge. "The freight carriers can actually sustain much greater delays because they have to curfew or curtail their movements to accommodate Metra movements."

Along the proposed PEC itself, freight carriers have much to gain. That's why the CPG's freight members were fully engaged in finding alternatives for the east-west 75th Street multi-carrier segment that includes Belt Jet., which Kiley calls "the worst choke-point of all," and for the related Englewood intersection.

The 2.5-mile 75th Street stretch forms a critical link between the southern and northern legs of Metra's SouthWest Service (SWS) route between Orland Park and downtown Chicago. Besides Belt Jct., there are parallel NS and Belt Railway of Chicago (BRC) tracks, freight yards at the west end, and a CSX Transportation crossing in the middle. Commuter trains can traverse this segment only by slowly snaking through a series of crossovers.

Metra now operates 16 revenue and two empty weekday SWS trains and plans to add 14 revenue runs by late 2005. On average, 40 daily freight trains use this lane now, with 20 more expected in a few years.

Some NS trains run in and out of nearby Landers Yard, while others move to and from 47th Street and Ashland Avenue yards farther north, all of which are primarily intermodal facilities. Using tracks owned by Metra, the Ashland Avenue-bound NS trains must share yet another junction, CP518, with SWS commuter movements and Union Pacific intermodal trains for nearby Canal Street yard.