CHICAGO — Norfolk Southern has selected four teams of structural design consultants for the Belt Junction and 80th Street Junction Replacements, part of the CREATE program’s massive 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project on Chicogo’s South Side.
The project, EW2 in the CREATE list of 70 projects to improve rail traffic flow in the Chicago area, will require replacement or major rehabilitation of almost 100 structures. Because of the complexity of the project and the number of structures requiring detailed plans, NS — which is overseeing this project on behalf of CREATE — awarded four separate packages, two with Parson as the prime consultant, one led by Hanson, and one led by Gannett Fleming. The four packages include a 30% Disadvantaged Business Enterprise participation goal to create economic opportunities in the project neighborhood. Structures involved are owned by NS, the Belt Railway of Chicago, and Metra.
“The CREATE Project EW2 is one of the nation’s most ambitious bridge replacement projects,” Ruth Brown, NS chief engineer, bridges & structures, said in a press release. “Covering nearly 100 structures along a 6-mile stretch of some of the most congested railroads in North America, this is a major undertaking – one that will bridge the divide these structures represented to south side communities for decades as they have approached the end of their useful design life. As Daniel Burnham, the architect of the City’s Master Plan so eloquently stated in 1910, ‘Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir [people’s] blood and probably will not themselves be realized.’ Those words ring so true today with this project.”
More on the DBE companies involved, and community outreach accompanying the project, is available here, and additional details on the 75th Street Corridor and its component projects are available here. Project engineering is expected to take about two years.
This is a very ambitious, but necessary, project. I’ve run trains through this area for CSX and I can verify its complexity. To untangle this mess will take a lot of $$ and coordination. But it will result in a much improved operation with far fewer delays.
At this rate it MAY be done by the nation’s tricentennial.