More sprawl we do not need, thank you very much

April 23rd, 2008 at 12:49am Chuck Sweeny

I’m an infrastructure fanatic, but the plans of the Tri State Alliance aren’t smart growth, they’re more of the tired, mega-developer driven development that, with $4 gasoline, we cannot afford.

The alliance, a group of road officials and local leaders from northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and eastern Iowa, want to build a 50-mile, $1 billion freeway across sparsely-populated Stephenson and Jo Daviess counties to Dubuque. I commented on that in an earlier post.

But this region’s future isn’t tied to Iowa. It’s tied to Chicago, same as it’s always been.

As Chicago goes, so goes us. But the Tri-State Alliance does not address the problem of road and rail congestion in the Windy City. And the more congested Chicago gets — some 1,200 passenger and freight trains a day — the less competitve our region will be.

So, how congested is it? Well, a container train takes roughly 48 hours to get from the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach to Chicago. It then takes the containers another two days to get switched around by an inefficient combination of trucks and trains, and headed to the east.

There’s a plan to alleviate this congestion, called CREATE.

CREATE is a $1.5 billion plan to get trains and trucks moving faster. But it’s seriously underfunded. Tri-State Alliance ought to make completion of CREATE a top priority because without it, Chicagoland’s future as a transport hub is in serious jeapordy as other cities such as Memphis step into the breech. Read more about CREATE here

and here.

I also have a serious disagreement with Tri State Alliance over the wisdom of building a “Beloit bypass” freeway through western Winnebago County to connect with U.S. 20. This would encourage sprawl development that only a mega-developer could love. When are we going to stop subsidizing these multi-millionaire strip-mallers? When gas hits $5 a gallon? $6?

What does make sense is to encourage a new kind of development along the corridor from Madison to Janesville, Beloit, Rockford, Belvidere and into Chicago. The cities are connected economically, culturally, educationally. But we can’t just do what we’ve been doing, not with $4 gas that won’t get cheaper.

Rather, we need to have public policies that encourage transit-oriented developments, then build the transit systems to serve them. You can see examples of this kind of development by taking a Metra train on any of its 12 lines. Retail-commercial-leisure and residential developments are mushrooming around train stations from Tinley Park to Cyrstal Lake.

This is not so far-fetched as a typical Rockfordian might think. Commuter rail projects are all the rage, as are light-rail projects. Cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Salt Lake City, Denver, Alberquerque, Houston, Phoenix, Charlotte, Minneapolis are developing light rail and commuter rail systems. And existing systems are being expanded. Leaders in those places realize that the America of the future is going to have to look and feel more like the America of the pre-auto age than the current, unsustainable mall-sprawl.

Finally, when we talk about Amtrak service, let’s be real. The proposed travel times of over 2 hours from Chicago to Rockford s are too slow to be competitive with cars.

What we need to do is go back to the future: In the 1950s and 1960s, the Illinois Central’s Land O’ Corn and Hawkeye trains ran the route from downtown Rockford to downtown Chicago in 90 minutes flat. Top speed was somewhere in the 90s, although engineers were known to full-throttle the engines to keep to the schedule, and some of those GM diesel-electrics had a top speed of 109 mph.

By contrast, when Amtrak took over the route in 1973, it’s “Black Hawk” train took 2 hours and 20 minutes to get to Chicago. The IC required Amtrak to crawl from Elmhurst to Chicago, a distance of 20 miles, at 20 miles an hour. Even a deer can run easily at 30 mph.

Congestion on Chicago’s rails has only gotten worse. And railroad traffic is only going to increase. So, if Rockford wants passenger or commuter trains, groups like Tri State Alliance will have to prioritize CREATE.

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