Citizens for Appropriate Transportation (CAT)
The Eisenhower Transportation Corridor

CREATE STUDY

Chicago and nation’s major freight railroads have started the Chicago Regional Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) project, which is their plan to improve freight rail safety and efficiency. The plan calls for increasing rail freight traffic on the tracks that run beside the Eisenhower Expressway in Oak Park.

The CSX portion of the Eisenhower Transportation Corridor has three tracks in part of Oak Park and three tracks in other parts. One three-track section is near Barrie Park, where the railroad constructed a spur track to allow trains to cart contaminated soil away from Barrie Park and to bring in clean soil to replace the contaminated soil. The second three-track section is between Oak Park and Harlem Avenues.

CSX has said that they need two tracks plus a service road. The service road would be located along the southern edge of the transportation corridor. CSX has also indicated a desire for a higher vertical clearance to allow double-stacked rail freight cars. Some Oak Park residents remember the incident from a few years ago when the CSX tried to run a freight train carrying SUV’s double-stacked on rail cars. The load was too high to get under the bridge at Oak Park Avenue, so the top SUV’s were scraped off. One major implication of this plan is that IDOT’s desire to take over part of the freight corridor for expressway expansion is not feasible.

CSX would like to increase freight train speed from 10 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour through Oak Park and more than double the number of freight trains from 10 to 24 per day.

CAT Home |