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Mmmhhmmm. You'd think. But go back up 7 lines, then left five words, to get to the one called "bribe." CN is giving up something very dear, their own route through Chicago, the St. Charles Air Line. They are the only railroad to have such a thing. That was the keystone to this whole project. No St. Charles Air Line going away, no Mayor Daley's support. No mayor's support, no project. CN wanted an ownership percentage of IHB as their reward. In a series of meetings at AAR in which I would have paid next month's salary to be a fly on the wall, the thumbscrews were turned until CN knuckled under. In one perspective, CN was simply obtaining the best deal for its investors possible. In another, they were holding the whole hub hostage. This is really, in the whole scheme of things, a trinket traded for a treasure. But beyond that, even though this appears to be pure CN benefit, that's way too simplistic a way of viewing this project. The whole hub is an interconnected whole, and if trains back up in one place, it forces delays in others. If you look a little closer, you'll find a junction that benefits "only" BNSF, a flyover that benefits "only" NS, and so forth. None of these projects, to my knowledge, are not supported by the traffic flows of the whole, and the authority on which I have that is one with which I'd trust my life. Moreover, you're missing the point that (a) connections between railroads for fundamental, free-market, economic reasons are the last place a railroad should put its money, and (b) the railroads aren't earning cost of capital. If you ask a railroad that is consuming itself in the hope that tomorrow will be better to put one penny into a project that has the least potential to help it bootstrap its way to success, it's not going to happen. When I first looked at CREATE, my first reaction was that the railroads weren't putting in very much cash. Then I smacked heel of hand to forehead, and said, well, duh, of course! This project is of little immediate benefit to them. Who does benefit is the citizens of the U.S. of A., Chicago, and northeast Indiana. Deny the project and we're only shooting ourselves in the foot. I always thought the point of economic activity was to make us rich, but as I'm learning in this forum, some would rather be "right" than be rich. OS
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