CHICAGO — Engineering and design firm Benesch has been selected by Norfolk Southern to handle final track design for Segment B of CREATE’s EW3 project, the Pullman Junction project on the city’s South Side.
The project will involve track infrastructure in a 2-mile segment from the Belt Railway of Chicago’s Commerical Yard, in the vicinity of 9500 South Commercial Avenue, through Pullman Junction to an area near 9500 South Sony Island Avenue. An additional mainline track and other changes will allow for increased train speeds and greater operational flexibility.
“The CREATE Program’s East-West Corridor is a critical freight rail artery and impacts network fluidity hundreds of miles outside this project’s limits,” Jeff Page, Norfolk Southern planning engineer for design and construction, said in a press release. “Dozens of daily freight trains traversing this location must slowly navigate existing Belt Railway Company of Chicago yard tracks. That will all change once this project is completed. The Benesch track design team will put pen to paper to get yet another CREATE project closer to shovel-ready.”
More information on the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency program is available at the CREATE website.
So the BRC line gets another main line…but does the NS one as well?