Chicago: Fluid at Last

Close cooperation, good communications, and trust are keeping freight and passenger traffic rolling free in the vital Chicago Gateway.

By Tom Judge, Engineering Editor

	Photo by Howard Ande

Some people say when you get railroads together, they can't even agree on the time of day. In fact, probably the last time the railroads in Chicago all agreed on something, the topic was the time of day-the creation of Standard Time. But this is now the 21st Century. To survive, railroads have to learn to cooperate rather than agreeing once every 100 years.

How vital is Chicago? About one-third of the rail traffic in the U.S. originates, terminates, or passes through the area. In 1999, the Chicago Gateway was in trouble. Dwell time in the major yards was averaging 41 hours. Throughput was averaging 45 hours. Metra commuter trains and Amtrak intercity trains were getting delayed by freight traffic.

Things came to a head with a winter storm a couple of years ago. "We had a very tough winter storm come through Chicago in 1998-99, just after the holidays," says Gregory Stengem, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway vice president-safety, training, and operations support. "First it wreaked havoc on the western roads, then it hit Chicago and moved to the East. It was a terrible storm, lasting 10-12 days. As the western roads were digging out, we started increasing our volumes back toward Chicago. Then Chicago had to dig out. Then the East got severely impacted. It ended up taking us about 90 days to recover from that one storm."

All of the railroad chief operating officers got together to do something about the situation. Because of the importance of the Chicago Gateway to all, they decided the railroads needed to treat Chicago as an integrated terminal. For all of the U.S. Class I's, Chicago is the end of the line. "So we had to develop an integrated transportation plan to manage throughput," says Stengem.

In April 1999, the railroads put together the Chicago Planning Group. The team is made up of representatives from BNSF, CSX Transportation, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific, as well as Wisconsin Central, Belt Railway of Chicago, Indiana Harbor Belt, and the two passenger carriers, Metra and Amtrak. The group was charged with looking at the management processes in place in Chicago and seeking improvements.

The Chicago Planning Group set up two task forces. First was the service design group, which also included representatives from each of the home roads. "We looked at everyone's transportation plan, then we sat down to examine what conflicts the plans were causing on each one of the corridors," says Stengem. "Then we started integrating those service design transportation plans. We reduced a lot of congestion that way. We also studied all the cars that were directed toward the Chicago Gateway. We did some analysis on that, then rerouted about 1,000 cars out of the gateway to other gateways to lessen pressure on Chicago."

Operating officers in Chicago were so busy with tactical execution of the plan that another group was needed to look at the systemic areas. So the railroads formed the Chicago Transportation Coordination Office (CTCO) on Jan. 1, 2000. Again, each road assigned a senior officer to work with the group.

CTCO is based in the Metra Dispatching Center just south of Chicago's Union Station. Activity for every line in the area is displayed on screens at the Metra building. CTCO can see the traffic volume just as the dispatcher sees it. This is not the command and control system, just an overview.

"We are at the heart of a coordinating group that is striving for greater fluidity through better personal interface at the local operations level," says Metra Chairman Jeffrey R. Ladd. "We are there because the competing freight railroads see us as neutral."

Scott Murry, formerly superintendent on NS, directs CTCO. Paul McVey of BNSF is assistant director. CTCO reports directly to the Chicago Planning Group. CTCO's charge is to watch the traffic flow directed toward Chicago and to start working on an integrated lineup pulled together on a website. For the first time, railroaders can see, from the industry level, the flows into Chicago as well as the inventory in Chicago and start taking preventive action if volume increases by directing traffic to different routes within the city.

If a single Class I or switching carrier was having difficulty due to incidents upstream in its network that could have a direct impact on Chicago as it broke loose, the group would take action. For example, if BNSF had a derailment and didn't send anything because the line was blocked for 48 hours, the railroad would have three days of business headed toward Chicago at one time. CTCO would manage those out of the ordinary flows.

This group also takes on initiatives where there are systemic problems. For example, if there is a problem with excessive train delays or re-crewing, then CTCO will sit down with the players associated with that specific area to work out long-term solutions. These might include service design changes or capital improvements for choke points.

The results of their efforts over the course of the past year-and-half, in association with the service design team and local operating officers, "have taken dwell time at the major yards in Chicago from 41 hours down to about 27," says Stengem. "Those are averages for the whole year. There are many days with dwell time less than 24 hours. That pretty much mirrors what the industry average is for major facilities. They've done a marvelous job in that area. Throughput crosstown was at 45 hours and is now averaging about 32. Again, that's a tremendous improvement."

Metra delays due to freight interference have decreased by 50% since CTCO's inception. "That's the result of the Chicago Planning Group's intense efforts at these bilateral meetings that have helped us clean up the service design offerings in Chicago," says Stengem. "In 1999, freight interference delays were about 30%. It's down to 14% right now."

CTCO also coordinates track work within the Chicago terminal. For example, if BNSF is doing work on one main, CSXT and NS don't take out another main and restrict flow. CTCO has an integrated maintenance plan for Chicago that only allows one corridor or one track in a corridor to be down at a time.

The Chicago Planning Group worked on the development of a computer model of the Chicago Gateway, believed to be the most complex railroad model in the world. Included in the model are Chicago's 893 miles of track, 125 interlockings, 57 separate yards, 4,600 control points (either a switch or a speed zone change), and all operating characteristics. The model includes 14,000 cars per day pointed toward Chicago, as well as more than 700 passenger trains and 500 freight trains.

"We can use this model to make changes in Chicago because we can look at the situation from a physical characteristic perspective," says Stengem. "We overlay our transportation plan, then let the model resolve the best operation for us. That way, we're not pushing problems from one corridor to another. We can see the downstream effects before we implement the change. It will help us identify the corridors where we need to make service design and physical plant changes."

Capital initiatives

The railroads have spent $639 million on capital improvements or maintenance in Chicago over the last three years. Major projects include consolidation of the IHB and CSXT dispatching center, and automating State Line interlocking, which is used by IHB, CSXT, and NS. There have been several double-tracking projects and many switch and route realignments to allow multiple moves. Many crossovers have been installed.

In several locations, crossings at grade are still controlled by onsite tower operators. In many instances, CTCO supplied computer displays for all approaching lines to the tower operators so they don't need to telephone three or four roads to find out what's coming before making a decision. They can now see what's coming. Another characteristic in Chicago is that many roads have trackage rights over other roads. Ownership is not the main issue. It's traffic volume, and who operates on a given line.

Winter action plan

"One of the CTCO's greatest success stories involves winter preparedness," says Stengem. "We asked them to develop a winter action plan so that if, in fact, we had a storm coming, we could be proactive. They came up with the Chicago Alert Plan, which features three levels of alertness based on amount of snow, temperature, and wind."

At Level 1, each road activates its own local preparedness plan. In Level 2, the effort intensifies. At this point, the railroads increase communications, set up conference calls every eight hours, and start intensely managing the flow of traffic into Chicago. They start looking at holding trains at least one crew district outside of Chicago, if necessary. At Level 3, a predetermined, preset transportation plan goes into effect. Railroads reroute 20% of the traffic destined to the Chicago Gateway using such other gateways as Kansas City, Memphis, St. Louis, or New Orleans.

"In December 2000, we had twice as much snow as the 1998-99 storm, and the temperature was below zero for 30 straight days," says Stengem. "Yet, we were able to recover from this huge storm in three days. It took us 90 days for a storm that was half as intense in 1998-99."

"One of the holes in the winter operating plan was we hadn't integrated intermodal into it," adds Stengem. "Chicago has lots of intermodal traffic. So we formed another subcommittee to work on intermodal operations. We have now integrated intermodal into the Chicago Alert Plan. Everything we had done up to that point was dealing with merchandise and unit train operations. The intermodal team came up with exactly the same type of actions at each one of the alert levels, so now we can manage all of the flows into Chicago. We'll be even better when the next storm approaches."

The intermodal subcommittee also worked hard on crosstown moves. The rubber-tire interchange of containers and vans at Chicago was a big issue. In January 2000, steel-wheel interchange was running at about 50,000 a month. In March of this year, it's up to 78,000. Conversely, rubber-tire interchange was about 51,000 units in January 2000, and was down to about 47,000 as of March. Volume was up 6% during this time. Using steel-wheel interchange instead of rubber-tire, Chicago railroads are saving $9 million a year in drayage costs.

"It took us almost a year to build relationships and trust among the Chicago Planning Group members so people would not come in and just defend parochial interests," says Stengem. "That blueprint also worked very well for the intermodal team."

"The COOs of all the railroads are thoroughly committed to a fluid gateway at Chicago," says Stengem. "Their support has been absolutely essential in getting the industry to move in the direction it needs to go. Best of all, our customers receive a more timely, safe, and consistent service through this gateway."