Comment EI-24953
Received or sent (printed as 7/14/2016)
The proposed Great Lakes Basin Railroad is dangerous to the public and needs stopped. GLB will close roads and subject the far Chicago suburbs with having to cross the tracks numerous times each day. It will also require many businesses to alter how they deliver services. A few examples are mail carriers and newspaper delivery people. Both these groups will be negatively impacted, as they will have to alter their route AND cross these dangerous lines multiple times per day. According to Operation Lifesaver a vehicle or person is hit every 3 hours by a train. Why would we want to add thousands of new public and private rail crossings, when we have existing tracks and crossings that can be expanded and improved to handle GLB’s proposed freight volumes and still by pass Chicagoland? The GLB proposal will result in numerous accidents per year, especially along the private rail crossing that GLB feels can just be built anywhere along their line. The STB needs to account for the increased fuel usage from the mail carriers, UPS divers, FedEx drivers, and newspaper delivery drivers when it calculates environmental impact. These people will be forced to make longer and more dangerous routes, they will idle more waiting for trains, and they will lose profits due to increased fuel and time costs associated with idling waiting for the train to pass.
Submitted by: Dennis Scheppler · Mount Prospect, IL
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-35952/comment/EI-24953 · back to the docket sheet