Recommendation
Maintain the region's status as North America's freight hub

Develop a unified regional approach for freight transportation issues

Our region’s freight network depends on careful, well-funded investment to ensure economic prosperity here and nationally. Coordinating regional action to obtain and prioritize new federal dollars for freight infrastructure is especially critical. CMAP and its partners have developed a strong regional voice on freight, working to address truck permitting issues, advocating for federal funds, and building coalitions to implement major projects such as the 75^th St. CIP. CMAP and its partners should continue this momentum to change federal, state, and local policies and support coordinated investment in the region’s freight network.

In 2017, CMAP's Regional Strategic Freight Direction established a programming framework to define the best use of limited capital funds for freight. It is especially timely given the growing federal and state emphasis on freight infrastructure needs. Enacted in late 2015, the current federal transportation law, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, provides the first-ever dedicated funding for freight improvements. This program is currently referred to by the U.S. DOT as the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) program, and it and other competitive federal programs offer significant resources to support large, complex projects with broad impact on speeds and volumes of goods movement. Regional consensus and action have the potential to attract broader investment; the U.S. DOT looks favorably on projects with broad regional support, and by limiting the number of proposals submitted by metropolitan Chicago and Illinois, our region and state can increase the likelihood of success. Released this year, the Illinois Department of Transportation Freight Plan identifies the major bottlenecks across the state, including those in northeastern Illinois. IDOT’s recently released competitive freight program makes strides to improve performance-based evaluation of freight project applications across the state.

Focus on improving local and regional truck travel

Freight has regional and local transportation, land use, and economic impacts. One clear opportunity is to improve truck routing through the region. While state law allows local governments to designate truck routes or determine preferred truck routes, many communities instead designate only where trucks cannot go. Local restrictions based on truck type, weight, and dimensions often change at jurisdictional borders, adding complexity to routes, prompting trucks to make turns and diversions to alternate routes when moving between municipalities. Drivers must individually verify each jurisdiction’s truck restrictions, as these local restrictions are not reported to a centralized public or private database. Although intended to limit noise, wear and tear, and other negative impacts of truck traffic, communities’ restrictions can in fact exacerbate such problems due to inconsistency and lack of coordination.

Working across jurisdictions can help maintain the Chicago region’s national freight stature while mitigating negative impacts and maximizing benefits for communities. Despite our region’s formidable overall freight profile, most activity tends to occur in a relatively small number of locations linked by the region-wide transportation network. Freight-intensive land uses tend to co-locate for efficiencies of shared infrastructure and workforce. Through their collaboration on economic growth initiatives, leaders of the seven counties in northeastern Illinois and the City of Chicago have identified truck permitting as a key opportunity for inter-jurisdictional cooperation. These regional leaders completed the Regional Truck Permitting Study, funded by numerous partners including the counties, City of Chicago, IDOT, and CMAP. Local restrictions represent another opportunity. Oversize and overweight permitting must be complemented by streamlined local routes that support movement of regularly loaded trucks. A recent LTA project in the O’Hare subregion offers one example of working across jurisdictions to create consistent truck routes, limiting truck traffic in residential and sensitive areas while still providing connected and consistent routes.

Mitigate the negative impacts of freight on adjacent areas, particularly Economically Disconnected Areas

While providing broad economic benefits, freight activity can have adverse impacts on communities. Truck and rail traffic can cause noise, congestion, air quality, and other negative impacts. Trucks cause heavy wear and tear on locally maintained roads, and at-grade rail crossings can cause delays for motorists as well as difficulty in routing emergency services. Residents may face safety concerns as truck traffic grows in areas that were not designed for heavy vehicles, and these vehicles can bring noise and pollution, as well. Communities in fast-developing areas are facing change that can negatively affect quality of life, or represent a transition from rural to urban. Many freight and industrial facilities also generate low returns from the property taxes and other fees that municipalities can enact, creating a gap between the cost to provide supportive infrastructure or services and the revenues generated. This can create a lag between infrastructure needs and local investment that would direct and improve truck movement and reduce negative impacts on adjacent communities. These cumulative factors often make freight a locally unwanted land use. The recommendation to Target Infill, Infrastructure, and Natural Area Investment in the Community Chapter offers more strategies for protecting agricultural lands as well as for fiscally and environmentally sustainable development and expansion.

The negative impacts of freight activities are of particular concern in EDAs, which have large concentrations in major freight activity centers such as the O’Hare area, the South and West sides of Chicago, the south Cook suburbs, and the Joliet area in Will County. The close correspondence of freight activity centers and EDAs is perhaps unsurprising, but nonetheless highlights the disproportionate location of noxious land uses in low income communities of color. Freight-adjacent areas often have lower residential property values , which in turn are more affordable to low income populations. There are many potential environmental justice concerns related to goods movement. In practice, responding to these concerns should be a project- and community-specific effort that actively engages residents and responds to local needs.

Assess the local and regional impacts of proposed major freight facilities

Goods movement infrastructure has far-reaching impacts on other modes of transportation, development patterns, local and regional economies, local quality of life, and the environment, so proposed new facilities generate numerous planning questions. While many types of freight development or infrastructure are being developed throughout the region, “major freight facilities” are sufficiently large to affect many jurisdictions, including developments such as large intermodal truck-rail facilities, sizeable new rail facilities, mergers and acquisitions among Class I railroads, and major new airport and seaport facilities. These facilities can generate significant amounts of truck and rail traffic, induce major real estate developments, and require significant new public investments in supportive infrastructure. Often these facilities are inaccessible even to nearby job seekers who lack access to cars and can exacerbate walkability issues in a community. While a single local, state, or federal entity may be responsible for permitting a proposed facility, proposals that affect many neighboring and overlapping jurisdictions must be evaluated for their broader impacts. The Regional Strategic Freight Direction includes principles to guide evaluation of major freight facility proposals. Although CMAP has no authority over local land use, federal decisions on railroad mergers, and similar initiatives, the agency can leverage its analytical and planning strengths to aid planning and implementation for major freight facilities.