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1. The Chicago, IDOT, Metra, and Class I planning people are aware of what's going on. Have been for decades. If you browse through all the reports you can find in Google (there are hundreds upon hundreds of reports, meeting notes, data sets, etc.), look at the dates these documents were issued. I have reports on my desk on Chicago dating to 1917 (!!!!) that have been ignored by the elected representatives of the voters ever since. The planners are not vested with dictatorial powers. The voters often don't want to listen, or don't want to pay, or prefer to wait for miracles to happen. The politicians can't act on their own, independent of the voters wishes -- and I'm thankful they don't, that's called totalitarianism. 2. Most of the planning and railroad types realize that a massive build-up of freight traffic on the J probably isn't going to happen now. The voters who live next to it would consider that a dimunition of their property values, and something that a reasonable person wouldn't have predicted when they bought the property, and the law is on their side. It's a lost cause. 3. If Chicago had three or four billion dollars in spare cash, it could pull all the yards out of the city and put them on the J, build up the J, and buy all the houses next to it for a few blocks on either side. Is that a reasonable use of that much money, out of anyone's pocket? Probably not. Most solutions in the real world are far from "ideal," but they are usually practical. 4. The suburbs intentionally did not institute grade-separation ordinances back when they had the chance. They wanted the railroad in order to enhance their property values and to create economic activity, and since they couldn't agree to coordinate with each other, none was about to independently pass an ordinance, because that would have encouraged railroads to go around it. What they could have done was agree to be incorporated into Chicago, but they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too -- piggyback on Chicago's economic engine while not paying any of the costs. In other words, the suburban forefathers sold future generations down the river for short-term economic gain. OS
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