Comment EI-13796
Received or sent (printed as 9/29/2008)
Dear Ms. Johnson-Ball, I am writing to you in regards to the proposed Canadian National Railway Company aquisition of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway. I, and the vast majority in our community, strongly oppose this aquisition for several reasons. First and foremost is the safety of our children. My neighborhood backs up to these tracks and to increase the traffic as the CNR would like to do would quite frankly make this a very dangerous environment for our children. We accept the few trains that pass through here now and have taken necessary precautions for our childrens' safety. To have the frequency of many more trains pass through daily would only increase the opportunity for disaster. One incident would be one too many. In addition, in order for our children to get to their schools, the only route is to cross these tracks. That applies to all grade levels of our schools. Those of us with Kindergarteners and up would have to face crossing these tracks several times a day just to get our children to and from school. In fact, my children's school, May Whitney in Lake Zurich, backs up directly to these train tracks. Think of the school bus drivers and how it will affect their routes. Can you imagine if I get a call from school that there is an emergency with my child and I am held up by a 2 mile train? Which brings me to our First Responders and their ability to get to our homes and to the hospital efficiently. Moments matter in an emergency situation that could mean the difference between life or death. Again, can you imagine a situation where someone loses their life because a freight train held up the First Responders? If this passes, it would increase the chances of this type of situation many times over? And for what? So the Canadian companies' needs can be met for the sake of the almighty dollar and somehow, their needs in business are greater than our own citizen's needs in safety? To think they would be awarded this at the expense of our communities, our real estate value, our childrens' safety, our emergency responders,our routes to work, school,church,shopping football,dance,doctors' office, you name it. As a working mother,I cross those tracks many times a day. Would it be fair for entire communities to have to now have the inconvenience of many, many long freight trains pass directly through our neighborhoods and cause complete chaos? I beg of you to please do all you can to prevent this from happening to us and to our communities. We all work so hard to make our homes and communities the one place in the world where we feel safe and secure. We would lose so much as a result of this aquisition, I can't begin to imagine how it would directly effect us every day. Please, please see to it that we fight the Canadian Railway and succeed in preventing them from ruining our treasured American communities and life as we know it. We must not allow this to happen! It is not right and more importantly, it is unnecessary. Far more bad would come than good. Thank you in advance for your efforts and your consideration. Sincerely yours, Colleen Stevens Hawthorn Woods, Illinois
Submitted by: Colleen Stevens · Hawthorn Woods, Illinois
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-13796 · back to the docket sheet