Illinois dilemma November 8, 2007
Posted by patlynch in Amtrak.trackback
Here is one I just don’t get. Would I be correct in presuming the rail is CN? The reporter doesn’t say. Which trains will be effected? How serious will it be? Here’s the story.
CHAMPAIGN- To the train tracks a change could make your trips to the Windy city even longer. Leaders from Champaign and Mattoon learned the railroad company is planning to reroute its freight trains around Chicago. That move would take out the tracks Amtrak uses to get from here to there.
People can hop on a train and make it to Chicago in just a few hours but soon, that’ll change because Amtrak will have to take a detour to get into the city it’s a few extra hours that riders say just isn’t worth it. Train rider, Meena Rao says “It would be disastrous in the sense that I would not take the train.”
A change in tracks would mean no more trains for Meena Rao. She lives in Chicago but works in Urbana. For her the train makes life a lot easier, “You can read, you can get work done and you don’t have the stress of driving.”
The track’s owner runs freight trains it wants to save time by moving its tracks around the city. The problem, Amtrak uses its tracks. So if it moves them these trains have to find another route into Chicago’s Union Station. Tacking on time for travelers. One couple is already planning a long trip to Washington state, so a few extra hours on the way just wouldn’t be worth it. “We’d think about doing something else if it’s going to be an extra 2 or 3 hours,” says the rider.
Several riders say they’d take their money elsewhere saying they’d lose the luxury of a quick trip home.
Depending on how this project is approved the change could be a year out or three years out. Local leaders aren’t waiting for that decision they plan to start a letter writing Campaign against this move.
They want to make it clear to the railroad company this is a big hassle. At the same time, they need to get to work on finding grants. Building new tracks for Amtrak to use to get to Chicago will cost about 25-million dollars.
patlynch
Logan Nash
Surely a journalist didn’t write this crap. Learn how to form a sentence.
Did you bother to follow the link? The block text is quoted verbatim from the article. I have seen many journalists exhibit poor writing skills.
However, is that the only basis for your critique? Are you criticizing the structure only or the content of the article as crap?
And if you are, you need to understand that to quote James Howard Kunstler, our rail system is one that Bolivia would be ashamed of. The fact that our roads are congested with semi trucks and other gridlock, and we are stuck with our dick in the middle East sandpit, is testimony to our underused and deteriorated rail system that can be 4-10 times more efficient than road transit if utilized properly.
The rational reponse to the problem stated in this article would be to form a public-private partnership to upgrade and add trackage to the corridor, a far cheaper alternative than the endless road-widening paradigm and the endless road rebuilds on a 5-year interval.
If you have no more to contribute to this discussion than a snappy one-liner indicating the article is crap, case closed.
One more thing, I hope you were in a hurry, Mr. Lynch, when you did this post. You mis-spelled dilemma as delima. Such mistakes only bring out the trolls, by giving them an excuse to dismiss the content by focusing on grammar and spelling errors, as if they have nothing better to do.
It is indeed CN. The corridor mentioned here is the Saluki/Illini between Chicago and Carbondale, IL and City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans. But since Chicago is the terminus for so many Amtrak routes, there could be far more trains affected. It could be very serious.
Yes, I followed the link, and my snappy one-liner was not directed at Pat Lynch if that’s what you think. He indented the passage because it’s a quote. I get that. In my opinion, the article is crap due to bad grammar (perhaps that’s the editor’s fault?), and because it leaves too many unanswered questions. Thank you, Pat Lynch, for clearing up the miasma in comment #4.