Time Magazine, 3/30:
Can We Make Chicago’s Trains Run on Time?
More than 8,400 rail cars a day run through lines operated by the Belt Railway Company of Chicago. Jamey Stillings for TIME
The most congested choke point for train traffic in North America is here in Chicago. It's where trains carrying Iowa corn meet black tankers full of North Dakota oil, where railcars with Wyoming coal rattle past others with Michigan SUVs.
One-quarter of all rail traffic in the U.S.--1,300 trains a day--transit this city, including six of the seven biggest railroads in the country. Almost anything traveling from coast to coast comes through here, where train traffic has become so tangled that old railroad hands like to joke it takes trains three days to get from Los Angeles to Chicago--and three more to get through Chicago.
The massive traffic jam is made worse by the fact that the region's busy commuter rail systems must compete for limited track space with the nation's largest freight lines.
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