Update CREATE

Even if a glacier can outrun progress on the CREATE project aimed to relieve both freight and passenger train congestion in and around Chicago, the Wall Street Journal has printed an article (First Section Page 3) regarding the project. There is other related discussion to the project, but it appears under topics such as NS-CP Merger proposals and various passenger train related. Since NS-CP is "off the table', there appeared to be no other topic at which to place this material:

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Fair Use:

CHICAGO—This city’s most famous poet, Carl Sandburg, called Chicago the “nation’s freight handler.” That title stands true today.

Every day, some 300,000 commuters on two dozen passenger train lines converge in Chicago, where they share limited real estate with six major railroad lines and 30,000 to 50,000 freight cars, or roughly 25% of the country’s freight rail traffic.

Chicago is the country’s No. 1 hub for freight traffic and No. 2 for commuter train lines—and its problems can bog down the whole system. Over the years, the city’s densely populated neighborhoods, grinding local politics and a host of infrastructure issues have kept trains from running on time. Road traffic and shared rail lines between commuter and freight systems have created the worst rail backlogs in the country. In 2003, it could take trains as long as 43 hours to crawl through Chicago, in some cases at five miles an hour.

That same year, city and state officials and railroad industry representatives undertook a $4.4 billion program called Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (or Create) to tackle rail congestion, point by point. Backers of the project estimate it will yield some $31.5 billion in economic benefits over the life of the project.

The program has grown to include 70 projects, 28 of them completed, including overpasses where passenger train and car traffic overlap, track upgrades and better coordination of shared tracks.

Here is an overview of the project, lest anyone, such as this author, needs to "get up to speed":

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I must say that I'm impressed with its progress. The Indiana Belt Line's projects are nearly complete, while completion elsewhere is more patchy. It looks like they are getting ready to build the north-south CSX part of the 75th St. project. The CSX tracks will be going on a flyover over 71th St. and over the east-west tracks at Forest Hill Junction. The 75th St. project even has its own home page: 75th St. CIP. Another project with its own home page is Grand Crossing Rail Project

I looked at some of the incomplete projects with Google Maps, and I found some at-grade junctions between rail lines. At least some of the projects involve building flyovers for some of the tracks. Will most of Chicago's junctions be getting flyovers?

CREATE has been a success so far. There's room for more projects, such as a flyover at A2 to eliminate what's one of the busiest commuter junctions in the country.

I keep hoping I'll live long enough to see grade separation of the EJ&E/CN in Barrington show up on the CREATE list, but it's not high enough volume compared to other junctions far more deserving.

The first time I was in Chicago, save a DEN-OMA-MDW-CLE-PIT-LGA during 1957, was April 1961 on a college visit journey. I arrived on the B&O Capitol Limited (why I picked it for my "maiden voyage" I know not; Mom and Dad were prepared to pay Sleeper any train).

I was astounded and appalled at how I was coming to "The Railroad Capital" and we were "picking and thumping" our way over one "diamond" and "grade" X-ing or the other. When later in my college days. I had journeys on the Century and B'way, there were still X'ings to pick your way over, even though I must note that the flyover of the Rock Island at Englewood has alleviated things for Amtrak operations on the PRR.

In short as I noted earlier. THE ONLY access/exit from CUS thst halfway resembles what you routinely find overseas is that of the C,B,&Q with "my" MILW a close second.

I'm trying to picture Grand Crossing in the 19th century, before the grade separation there. How many diamonds? Dispatching passenger trains in Chicago must have been a nightmare day in and day out for over a century. I suppose that before CREATE there was no way of getting all the railroads together in a room to coordinate things, and almost all the choke points involved three or more.

Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program - CREATE Program - the site now looks rather nice-looking.

Program Maps - CREATE Program has CREATE Project Status Summary 201208.xlsx - status_map-1.pdf last updated 2020 Dec 08, 7 months ago.

Lots of red stars (completion), 3 green circles (under construction), several purple squares (final design), several blue diamonds (environmental + PE), and several gray circles and lozenges (future rail projects)

I'd like to think that some of those future rail projects could get infrastructure funding out of that $66B that's tagged for passenger *AND* freight rail... So far, the only noise has been around Amtrak equipment purchases and bridge/tunnel replacements that directly benefit Amtrak in the NEC.

The 75th-St. project is now under construction.

CREATE 75th - "The 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project (75th St. CIP) is the largest project in the CREATE Program. The project is located in the Chicago neighborhoods of Ashburn, Englewood, Auburn Gresham and West Chatham along two passenger and four freight rail lines."

Timeline - About - CREATE 75th

Design for P3/GS19 should be complete by the end of the year, and construction on it will be in 2022-24.

Design for P2 and EW2 continues, and should be complete by the end of this year.

P3 temporary construction should already be happening.

"Local Mobility/Viaducts Improvement Construction" should have already started.

• P3 - Forest Hill Flyover (75th Street Corridor Improvement Project) - CREATE Program
• GS19 - 71st Street Grade Separation (75th Street Corridor Improvement Project) - CREATE Program
• EW2 - 80th Street Junction Replacements (75th Street Corridor Improvement Project) - CREATE Program
• P2 - Rock Island Connection (75th Street Corridor Improvement Project) - CREATE Program

Those pages struck me as repetitive and not very informative, however.

For the Forest Hill Flyover, I found elsewhere what tracks would be going over what tracks: JD Supra: Rail Projects In Chicago And Ohio Receive U.S. Department Of Transportation INFRA Grant Funding

• The Forest Hill flyover consists of a new north-south flyover structure eliminating conflicts between north-south and east-west train movements at the Foresthill Junction;
• The 71st Street Grade Separation will separate the Western Avenue rail corridor from 71st street;
• The Argo Connections component will improve connections at the Argo and Cana junction, address the 87th Street chokepoint, and increase capacity at Argo yard.

So the CSX line, the north-south one, will be going over the other lines, the east-west ones.

The Forest Hill Flyover aims to eliminate a congested rail chokepoint - YouTube - datelined 2019 May 17 - agrees with which tracks will go over which other ones, and shows the Forest Hill junction.

That junction is some diamond crossings, where tracks cross each other at 90d angles. I suspect that the temporary construction will be an extra track for CSX on one side or the other of the existing CSX tracks. That will enable the CSX line to continue to be straight, by letting the flyover be constructed at the existing line.

Looking at Google Maps, I find a pair of prefab diamond crossings near the tracks. These are both 2 tracks by 2 tracks, meaning that the CSX line will stay double-tracked through the project.

The four pages have the same "Scope of Work" section, word for word. I will quote what it states for the rest of the 75th St. project.

The approach will consider reconfiguring the Belt Railway of Chicago (BRC) main tracks between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Belt Junction, where four freight railroads conflict with each other and Metra’s SouthWest Service operations (EW2). The project will consider constructing a second main track for Metra’s SouthWest Service operations from near Wrightwood Station to Western Avenue (P2). The project will consider reconfiguring and building a third BRC main track, and constructing a flyover to connect the Metra SouthWest Service to the Rock Island Line in the vicinity of 74th and Normal and 75th and Parnell (EW2 and P2).

I am most interested in the projects that allow Amtrak to operate faster, particularly to the Southeast to Indiana on the way to Michigan & Ohio

But the one item that would help Amtrak the most is P-4 ( Grand Crossing) has not even gotten final EIS.

CREATE Project Status Summary 201208.xlsx - status_map-1.pdf has a list of projects by status along with a map. The project statuses:

1. Initiation pending funding avaiablility
2. IDOT Phase I - Environmental + PE
3. IDOT Phase II - Final Design (PS&E)
4. IDOT Phase III - Construction
5. Project Completed

• Belt Corridor: _ . _. _ . 1 . 10
• East-West Corridor: _ . _ . 3 . _ . 1
• Western Ave. Corridor: _ . 1 . _ . 2 . 1 . 4
• Passenger Corridors: 2 . 2 . 1 . 1 . 1
• Tower Projects: 5 . _ . _ . _ . 7
• Grade Separations: 11 . 5 . 2 . _ . 7
• Other: 1 . _ . _ . 1 . 1

Total: 19 . 8 . 8 . 4 . 31
Grand total: 70

Interesting that tower projects jump so quickly to completion - there are none in intermediate stages. Does that mean that towers are done relatively quickly?

I looked at Bing Maps and I found the same two 2*2 prefab diamond crossings at the P3 crossing.

Just south of the crossing is a small yard. Since the north-south tracks will be elevated, that means the end of the northern entrance to that yard.

To get an idea of how far the elevation will extend I researched the likely flyover height and slope (track grade).

To allow doublestacks, the height must be 21' or more.

Grades and curves | Trains Magazine - on main lines, usually less than 1%, with more than 2.2% being rare.

A 1% grade for a 21-ft bridge means 2100 ft of approach track. On the south, that is near the southern entrance to that yard, while on the north, that is well to the north of where the two connection tracks meet the tracks. However, there is plenty of room for these tracks to parallel the flyover tracks.

lpetrich wrote: ↑Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:01 pm
Grades and curves | Trains Magazine - on main lines, usually less than 1%, with more than 2.2% being rare.

A 1% grade for a 21-ft bridge means 2100 ft of approach track. On the south, that is near the southern entrance to that yard, while on the north, that is well to the north of where the two connection tracks meet the tracks. However, there is plenty of room for these tracks to parallel the flyover tracks.

Six axle locomotives can negotiate a 6% curve at slow speeds without any problems. Many wye tracks at junctions are around 6% and freight trains regularly travel over them usually with a 10mph or so speed limit.