Monday, January 01, 2007

Movin' frieght in Chicago

I thought the tragedy of the Big Box ordinance debate was the City never cut a deal from Walmart for a distribution center. (Maybe at the old Brach's site on the West Side?) That would have been of far greater value to Chicago and the region then higher wages in the stores.

Here's a from a post in Bill Testa's blog,

Rising global trade has dramatically added to cross-continental freight traffic through Chicago from imported goods landed on the East Coast going west and from the West Coast headed east. Much of this freight activity takes place in Chicago’s large railroad yards and side tracks. Chicago is also a major destination and transfer point for freight carried by truck. Because highway overpasses and underpasses for rail have not been constructed everywhere or they are of insufficient height, auto and truck traffic becomes further congested and delayed.

Adding to local truck-related congestion is the fact that, in order to accommodate rising freight traffic in a cost effective way, goods are now hauled in standardized containers. These containers are often transferred between transportation modes within Chicago, especially by “lifting” containers from truck to train and train to truck. According to World Business Chicago, the Chicago area now ranks among the top five cities in the world in container “lifts” behind Hong Kong and Singapore, where freight lifts mainly take place onto and off of large ocean-going vessels.

The strongest impulse of local policymakers is to find ways to keep transportation flowing through Chicago and possibly build on it as the opportunities arise. By one estimate, rail freight companies and their suppliers employ about 37,000 workers in the Chicago area, while trucking accounts for another 50,000 jobs.
Our politicians avoided the hard work of public infrastructure and cutting real deals for projects that fit our natural economic strengths to demagogue wages at Walmart.

7 comments:

Anonymous,  3:58 PM  

Precisely because of the height restrictions of underpasses, gridlock in the local street network, etc., the distributors want to STAY OUT of Chicago with large facilities. They would rather stay on the perimeter of Chicago and truck in city-bound cargo at 10 PM - 4 AM. Read between the lines on why "Chicago" is #5 in container transfers. This is increasingly being done in Rochelle, Joliet and other intermodal centers (still counting as a "Chicago" transfer) and less at the older centers where logistics are at a disadvantage. The CREATE project, if it is ever built, will help slow the abandoning of city facilities by the warehousers, but it will not stop it.

Bill Baar 4:46 PM  

I know. A good friend of mine used to schedule delivers to Lake and California. You needed a special algorithim to figure out the routes given restrictions.

Rochelle is not doing as well as planned. Chicago offers a lot of the Politicans would invest in stuff they should invest in, instead of demogaguing wages.

Cal Skinner 6:37 PM  

In the 1990's House Republicans opposed improving the situation because Democrats proposed it.

Anonymous,  10:23 PM  

Wasn;t Mayor Daley proposing some-type of expressway soley for the use of semi's and such along north-south raillines.

Anonymous,  10:30 PM  

Yes, I was to be named the Daley-Tadin expressway. Best part was, no tickets or legal interference at all D.W. Great idea!!

Anonymous,  6:54 PM  

I'm not sure if Rochelle is doing all that badly. I am sure that the Joliet arsenal IM facility is going gangbusters. If the Rochelle facility had been built in Maple Park as originally planned, it might have taken off sooner, being closer in to the suburbs it would serve.

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