Village Board Continues to Fight for Railroad Funding

The Barrington Board of Trustees is fighting to ensure funding for a grade separation at Route 14 and the Eastern Joliet & Elgin (EJ&E) railroad crossing comes through.

At the Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 28, the group voted to allow President Karen Darch to sign a cooperative agreement that will move $2.8 million in federal funding from appropriated funds to obligated funds, making their status more secure.

“We are hoping the TIGER II grant money for preliminary engineering for the project will remain in place. We will know more about that shortly,” Darch said at the board meeting. “Then of course we’ll be seeking additional funding in the days, months and years ahead to complete that grade crossing project.”

The grade separation is estimated to cost about $70 million.

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin announced that federal funding awarded to Barrington by the U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER II program could be at risk. The funding for the project was cut in the House of Representatives spending bill for 2011.

That money would be used for phase one planning and design engineering of an underpass at the railroad crossing at U.S. 14. The underpass would help address the safety and quality of life concerns that arose with Canadian National Railway’s purchase of EJ&E.

Village President Karen Darch has been a long-tine advocate for reducing rail traffic in Barrington.

“Since the beginning of the federal review process for CN Railway’s purchase of the EJ&E, the Barrington communities have warned that federal approval of the transaction would ultimately require significant investment of dollars along the line to minimize harms being create to business interests and public safety in the collar counties,” Darch said on Friday. “The Highway 14 grade separation would not be necessary absent federal approval of CN’s plan for a fourfold increase of freight traffic on a U.S. highway that sees over 34,000 cars traveling on it daily.”

In the meantime, Barrington is still waiting to hear the outcome of its lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals regarding CN Railway’s acquisition of EJ&E. The village argues that the Surface Transportation Board failed to consider the safety and environmental impacts of the sale.

“We are waiting still on a decision from the appellate court on the EJ&E case and that will be formative as to other steps as we go forward,” Darch said.

Darch’s fight against rail congestion doesn’t stop there. She attended a listening session of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at the DuPage County Airport on Feb. 20. The group is working on the new transportation re-authorization safety bill, and Darch made sure Barrington’s issues were heard.

“We did present testimony about the importance of road infrastructure when it’s impacted by rail and we’re making sure that is something that is funded in the future, and perhaps looking at the allocation of those costs on the private sector rail versus the American tax payers,” she said.

The bill to cut transportation spending now heads to the Senate for consideration.