The Vocal Few Speak Out Against Suburban Rail Freight Plan

ELMWOOD PARK, Ill. (WBBM) - Only a handful of people turned out at an Elmwood Park public meeting Tuesday evening to voice support for the purchase of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Ry. by Canadian National Rys.  But those who did had plenty to say.

WBBM's Bob Roberts reports.

"I have no sympathy for them," said 80-year-old, lifelong Franklin Park resident Wallace Felt of northwest suburbanites who are horrified at the prospect of 25 trains a day on the EJ&E's freight belt.

Felt said he endures more than 100 trains a day and has never seen train traffic through his community as intense as it is today.

"It's the noise, the congestion.  If I want to go across the track someplace I have to wait," he said. "Traffic is being backed up.  Children are being delayed going back and forth to school."

Felt estimates that he has spent six months of his life waiting for trains to pass at crossings in Franklin Park.

Elmwood Park Mayor Peter Silvestri told those few in attendance that the relief CN purchase of the EJ&E would provide is comparable to what I-294, and later I-355, has provided for Chicago-area motorists.

"Some of my friends and colleagues in the northwest suburbs will say, 'But you've always had them,'" Silvestri said. "No, we haven't always had them.  We've had a tripling of the number of trains we have in just 20 years." 

He suggested that, instead of fighting the purchase, northwest suburban officials try to line up financing for strategically-placed underpasses, using a combination of local, state, federal resources and money from Canadian National.

But Franklin Park Mayor Daniel Pritchett, who recently celebrated the opening of a long-anticipated underpass on Grand Avenue, said communities cannot expect CN to pay for more than 5-10 percent of the cost.

Silvestri and Pritchett both said their goal wasn't to shove the burden onto communities along the EJ&E so much as it is to "share" it.  And Pritchett said he objects to those who say additional train traffic would harm the communities that are the "economic foundation" of the Chicago area, wording used in a newspaper ad placed earlier this year by opponents.

"What are we?  We're the blue-collar, working-class suburbs here and I think we're the economic engine of the Chicago area," Pritchett said.

Supporters drew about 200 people to a previous public meeting in South Holland.  Silvestri and Pritchett said they believed the clean-up from last week's floods kept attendance below 30 Tuesday evening. 

The meeting was not a formal STB public hearing.  STB scheduled seven hearings, six of which took place in communities bordering the EJ&E, between Aug. 25 and Sept. 11.  Silvestri said he asked for a hearing in the "inner belt" near western suburbs that support the sales in order to help balance the record, but said STB turned him down. 

The local officials, who banded together earlier this summer to try to provide a counterpoint to the well-organized and vocal opposition, said they would urge local residents to e-mail STB officials before it stops taking public comment next Tuesday on the draft environmental impact statement on the purchase.

EJ&E owner U.S. Steel would like to complete the sale by Dec. 31, but the STB last week rejected a CN proposal to put the matter on "fast track" consideration.  CN has appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.