Editor’s Note from F.K. Plous, Corridor Capital’s Director of Communications: The CREATE program has kicked off the single most important project in its whole menu of infrastructure rationalizations across the Chicago rail network – the 75th Street Corridor, including the region’s single biggest choke point, the flat crossing of the east-west Belt Railway of Chicago along 75th Street with the north-south CSX main line that runs just east of Halsted Street and used to belong to the Baltimore & Ohio. The CSX tracks will go up over the Belt on a new bridge, and the elevation also will eliminate a road grade crossing at 71st Street.
Although the map in the link still does not show it, the project also will include an eastward extension of the Belt tracks to a new junction with the Metra Rock Island tracks at 74th and Vincennes. This new track will enable Metra to reroute its Southwest Service trains from congested Union station to underused LaSalle Street Station, opening up new slots at Union Station for contemplated (but still unfunded) new state-supported Amtrak trains to the Quad Cities and additional frequencies to St. Louis.
But the big beneficiary is the freight rail system. Trains that now take 12-24 hours to work their way across Chicago should be able to do it in four or five. – F.K. Plous
From Progressive Railroading Magazine; October 2, 2018
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner yesterday joined other public officials and rail industry representatives at a ceremony to mark the funding of the 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project in Chicago.
The $474 million project is a linchpin in the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) program, which aims to eliminate a chokepoint at a critical South Side Chicago junction for freight and passenger trains.
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