Dramatic figures and statements about freight train problems show what could be at stake economically for businesses throughout the suburbs.

The chairman of the Railroad Safety Committee of the House in the Illinois General Assembly said other cities could take away business from the Chicago area, which is the fifth largest intermodal port in the world.

State Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D-57th) said people in Memphis, Dallas and Kansas City are “looking with a gleam in their eye as they try to take away freight business from Chicago. Warehousing and other logistic businesses involved in the freight train industry are a very strong driver for the Chicago region.”

“I live in fear of the rail industry getting tired of the congestion in the Chicago area and taking their business elsewhere,” said Nekritz.

The severity of the situation in the Chicago area is illustrated by statements from the Canadian National (CN) Railway Co., which has sought U.S. government approval to purchase the Elgin Joliet and Eastern (EJ&E) Co. to reduce congestion on current CN lines in the area.

E. Hunter Harrison, president and chief executive officer of CN, said it can take a CN freight train 24 hours to travel 30 miles through the Chicago region longer than it does to travel the 863 miles from Winnipeg, Canada to Chicago.

This situation, he said, wastes fuel, increases vehicle crossing delays and produces excess emissions in the region’s environment.

“As a result of this transaction (CN’s plan to purchase the EJ&E), trains that have no need to stop in the region will flow quickly and smoothly to their destination,” Harrison said.

“The acquisition also supports regional economic growth and is a significant step toward preserving the region’s role as the transportation hub of North America.”

Harrison did not appear at the Jan. 31 hearing in Chicago, but his statements were released at the hearing by Doug Holt, director of media practice for the Burson-Marsteller office in Chicago.

“It is so political,” Nekritz said after the hearing. “Some people in the General Assembly are already entrenched. That is why the comments by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) are so important.”

Randy Blankenhorn, executive director of CMAP, said “The Chicago region has a tremendous amount at stake and—like the proposed EJ&E acquisition—the movement of freight can have a wide range of potentially positive or negative effects, including economic ones.”

He said at the hearing that freight bottlenecks make it harder for commuters in cars and trains to reach their destinations and harder for companies to get their goods into and out of the Chicago region.

“But if we get it right, freight traffic can serve as a major engine of economic prosperity,” Blankenhorn stated.

The CMAP executive said Metropolitan Chicago has traditionally not had a champion to look out for the public interest in freight issues.

“National discussions and decisions about the movement of goods are dominated by port cities and states, partly because our region has not had a strong voice despite being the nation’s hub of truck and rail freight,” said Blankenhorn.

He noted that CMAP was created by state law two years ago to fill that leadership function on regional matters. Freight and goods movement are a regional issue more than a state issue. He said this issue is broader and more complex than an accumulation of the 283 municipal and seven county governments’ individual interests.

“We simply do not have enough information yet to determine whether this acquisition is in the region’s best interests,” he said.

He also said CMAP is ready to provide the federal government’s Surface Transportation Board (STB) with any information necessary to help it make the best decision for the residents of the Chicago region.

CMAP’s review, Blankenhorn stated, must carefully balance anticipated transportation benefits of a significant increase in freight traffic over the next 20 years along with impacts at the community levels.

“Interactions between the region’s freight, passenger rail and highway system are a major concern that impacts our quality of life and economic prosperity.”

Dollar figures for improving the interaction between vehicles and trains were mentioned at a press conference held by Barrington area officials an hour before, also in the Thompson Center.

With 133 grade crossings along the EJ&E, the needed investment in infrastructure improvements is prohibitively expensive, according to Karen Darch, president of the village of Barrington.

She said a conservative estimate is that 50 percent of those crossings would need an underpass or overpass built at an estimated cost of $40 million per crossing. So, the necessary infrastructure improvements would amount to almost $3 billion.

“Unless CN is willing to invest the funds necessary to pay for this mitigation in its totality, we wonder where that money will come from to pay for these critical and costly infrastructure improvements.”

Without these improvements at many of the grade-level crossings, Darch said the flow of commuter traffic will be continuously gridlocked as CN makes the EJ&E its “Highway 294” of freight traffic.

Darch said that the General Assembly Railroad Safety Committee members and other elected officials have a role and a responsibility to understand the negative impacts of CN’s purchase on public safety.

“We are pleased that the Railroad Safety Committee has called this hearing,” Darch said. “We believe it is their responsibility to ask the tough but basic questions related to safety on this proposed acquisition.”

During the hearing, committee member Sidney H. Mathias (D at the beginning stage of a process which hopefully will take place over the coming months.

“We want to be sure there is a viable freight system. There are a lot of questions. The devil is in the details,” said Mathias, who has an office in Arlington Heights as well as in Springfield.

A state administrator who testified at the hearing said his agency needed more time to determine the impact of the proposed purchase. “We have not yet received critical information (from CN),” said George Weber, acting bureau chief, division of public & intermodal transportation for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Another state agency, the Illinois Commerce Commission, has jurisdiction over safety matters, according to Michael Stead, rail safety program administrator, who testified at the hearing.