Comment EI-11590
Received or sent (printed as 9/13/2008)
It is obvious that little if any research has been done on the Environment effect of the purchase of the EJ&E Rail line by Canadian National to Plainfield. Some say the people can take alternates routes!!! Here is what Plainfield is like: Today Highway 59 in the main road running North & South through Plainfield. To the west of Plainfield is the Des Plaines river with no North/South route until you cross the river with only one route within two miles, for residents living on the south side of the city. That route involves crossing a hundred-fifty old single lane bridge, yes one car on at a time on the bridge. To east of Plainfield are a large number of abandon quarrys with NO north/south roads on the south and north side of Plainfield. The only route Plainfield residents have to go south is HWY 59. The City of Plainfield has feeders/exists off of Inerstate 55, hwy 126,hwy30 & hwy59 running directly into the two lane road in downtown Plainfield with approximately 30% of these vehicles being tractor trailers. ON a daily bases, for six hours, traffic is backedup two to three miles outside the City Of Plainfield. The purposed 35 additional daily trains, two miles long, crossing Hwy 126 and Lockport street within quarter mile of hwy 59 in Plainfield would cripple the city for most of the day. Daily rush Hour" traffic would increase from six hours to ten hours. Ambulances, firetrucks and school buses would be stuck in traffic for hours, as there are no alternate routes. Please help, it has nothing to do with noise,it is an environmental issue. The city of Plainfield would be crippled if the sale is allowed and the Safety and welfare of our citizen would suffer. Someone looked at installing a overhead rail on 135th street, let me present to you. Hwy 59 within the city of Plainfield has ten to twenty times the traffic as 135th on a daily bases. Someone is sleeping! May I suggest the Federal Officials involved in this decision visit Plainfield on any day of the week at 8:00am or 5:00pm and be prepared to spend an hour to go three mile without train interference. Add train interference, it will take you an additional half hour or more to get through Plainfield. It's a parking in this city on a daily bases, with train tracks right next to the main route a bad situation today would be untolerable. I would be more than happy to show anyone interesting in seeing this situation first hand, including Canadian Rail who say there is determental environmental effect with this purchase."
Submitted by: Gerald M Warzon
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-35087/comment/EI-11590 · back to the docket sheet