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.