By Bryce Gray<\/p>\n
Chicago railroads\u00a0are teeming with activity, routing\u00a01,300 trains daily.\u00a0 Travelers fill 800\u00a0passenger trains, while another 500 haul freight cars filled with\u00a0corn from Iowa, coal from Wyoming, wheat from the Great Plains, oil from North Dakota and so many other commodities.<\/p>\n
Currently the nation\u2019s railways are the busiest they\u2019ve been in years, causing logjams at spots throughout Chicago \u2013 such as 63rd<\/sup> and State, and along 75th<\/sup> Street. The bottlenecks reverberate throughout the economy and across the country.<\/p>\n \u201cThe railroads are moving more traffic than at any time since 2007 and the last recession,\u201d said Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the American Association of Railroads<\/a>. Greenberg reported that 2014 saw more than 28.7 million carloads, containers and trailers take to the railways.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chicago shoulders the rail traffic spike\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n While the spike in rail traffic is a national phenomenon, Chicago shoulders a big share of the burden with its prominence as a rail hub where six of the nation\u2019s seven largest railroads converge.<\/p>\n \u201cChicago is at the epicenter of the nation\u2019s rail system,\u201d said Greenberg. \u201cRoughly 25 percent of all rail traffic cuts through Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n Increased rail volume has created the bottlenecks, according to local rail authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chicago region has become capacity-constrained and this is a choke point for freight,\u201d said Jeff Sriver, director of transportation planning and programming at the Chicago Department of Transportation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shipping oil from the domestic fracking boom is often blamed for the glut. But numbers show that crude oil is still just in the minor leagues of rail transport and suggest that a more general upswing in the economy may be the main force behind snarled rail traffic.<\/p>\n