Amtrak Wants New Chicago Yard with Plans to Sell Present Site

KEY POINTS  

• Amtrak says its aging, undersized 14th Street Yard no longer adequately supports Chicago’s 28 daily departures and 16 routes.

• The proposed Canal Street yard would use daytime and early-evening train movements, enclosed servicing, Tier 4 engines, and lower LED lighting to limit neighborhood impacts.

• Residents and environmentalists oppose the project, citing diesel emissions, runoff and toxic spills, limited community input, and concerns about future development at the current yard site.

Amtrak, America’s passenger rail network, wants to move its large Chicago coach yard from its current location just south of Union Station in the South Loop further south into the Chinatown and Bridgeport neighborhoods.

And that isn’t sitting well with residents and environmentalists.

Why Amtrak Wants to Move the Yard

Amtrak, flush with more than $600 million in Federal Railroad Administration grants for the project, says it needs the new Canal Street site because its current 14th Street Yard is “aging” and doesn’t adequately support maintenance operations for the 28 daily departures and 16 routes currently running out of the city.

It describes the current site as “undersized” and offering “fragmented facilities requiring splitting trainsets and multiple inefficient movements.”

Amtrak didn’t provide a representative to speak to but referred inquiries to online information.

The rail operator said it has been exploring alternative sites prior to 2023 and examined expanding the current yard as well as relocating to a Union Pacific yard three miles west. The first would mean “rebuilding a space-constrained facility in place and around active train operations.”

Amtrak's current coach yard in the South Loop is targeted for a 47-acre redevelopment. Image: Ron Stang

The second had “problems with property availability, dispatching, routing and constructability.”

The Canal Street yard, roughly two miles south, fit the bill because Amtrak could keep “running service throughout construction, instead of working around active trains for years.”

That site was a former railway freight and intermodal terminal with RR tracks running through it. That activity stopped about 2019. It runs from S. Archer Ave. two miles south to W. Pershing Rd. with commercial and residential neighborhoods abutting including the Chicago White Sox’s Rate Field, which plays a part in the dispute.

Amtrak’s Case for the Canal Street Site

Amtrak makes the case that its proposed yard will have far less impact on the neighborhoods than the former freight and intermodal terminals.

Train movements, for example, will mainly be in daytime and early evening hours and servicing in an enclosed shed. Engine idling would be “minimal” and “unlike freight locomotives” are plugged in rather than left running and EPA Tier 4 compliant, “the highest fuel standard.”

Passenger trains are “lighter, shorter and quieter” and there would be no moving of shipping containers so “routine vibration source is limited train coupling at low speed.”

Shown in an image is the proposed Canal Street yard used to be a freight and intermodal terminal. Image: Amtrak

LED lighting at lower heights cuts “spill and glare and replaces the legacy high-mast unshielded fixtures.”

Air quality should improve compared to “when yard operations involved multiple diesel switching units running daily pushing heavier and longer freight trains.”

Why Residents Oppose the Project

Critics aren’t buying it.

Two public meetings were well attended with vociferous pushback. And local ward alderman Nicole Lee issued a statement condemning the project.

Hannah Dembosky, founder of Bridgeport Environmentalists and manager of the Illinois Environmental Council’s Chicago office, as well as a Bridgeport resident, said Amtrak is comparing the site to “the height of when it was hauling freight, not actually the present day.”

She’s also concerned about the federal “categorical exclusion” Amtrak received dispensing with a full environmental assessment and “refused to release any environmental studies” despite claiming these were done.

“I will believe it when I see it,” she said.

The yard is within a mile of 17 schools and eight senior living homes, she added.

Dembosky said “one of the biggest concerns” is “diesel particulate matter and diesel fumes” which are potentially cancerous. Another is runoffs and toxic spills including to the nearby Chicago River.

Dembosky suggested Amtrak is moving quickly on the project, announcing it only within the last couple of months, catching the community “off guard with very little input.” Yet it has hired a developer and published a construction timeline.

She thinks the “main reason” for the change is that Amtrak wants to “open up” its present 47-acre yard for future development including a new White Sox stadium, opposite the current Chicago Fire soccer club stadium now being built.

Amtrak’s developer Canal Edge LLC is helmed by White Sox minority partner Justin Ishbia, who has coveted a plan for a new White Sox stadium and this month announced plans by his private equity firm Shore Capital Partners to buy what it is calling “The Railyards” for a sports and entertainment district. Canal Edge is also investing $125 million in the Amtrak project.

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