Drivers in and around Chicago are used to seeing lots of trucks on the roadways. Those trucks aren’t just transporting goods. They are keeping the wheels of commerce turning for all of Illinois and much of the country.
It comes with the territory when your state is a perennial leader in logistics facility investment and goods movement. Approximately 25% of all freight trains and 50% of all intermodal trains in the U.S. pass through metro Chicago. Trucks account for about one in seven vehicles on the urban interstate highways in Illinois. Some facilities in metro Chicago carry over 30,000 trucks each day.
And even more transportation infrastructure investment is on the way.
Site Selection magazine’s annual Global Groundwork Index looks at national infrastructure investment figures from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) alongside the publication’s proprietary data on corporate end-user facility investment. The ranking’s 2023 edition found Chicagoland is No. 4 in the country — part of an upper echelon of Midwestern cities with intrinsic industrial and geographic ties to Chicago like spokes on a wheel: No. 1 Indianapolis (185 miles to the southeast); No. 5 Cincinnati (300 miles); and No. 2 Columbus, Ohio (five hours away).
Nearly 1,200 Illinois projects are receiving more than $10.2 billion in federal funding from the BIL. Some of those projects involve famously tangled highways, but they include other modes too: commuter rail on Chicago’s North Side and freight rail along the metro area’s Western Avenue Rail Corridor, for example. Among four projects nationally to receive Large Bridge Project Grants in 2022, the City of Chicago will receive $144 million to rehabilitate four bridges over the Calumet River on the Southside of Chicago.
The Calumet River connects Lake Michigan with the Illinois International Port District (IIPD), which is further connected to the Illinois River providing access to the Gulf of Mexico. Each bridge lifts an average of 5,000 times per year, providing continuous and safe access for marine traffic to and from the port and surrounding industry. The bridges carry a combined average of over 40,000 vehicles per day, 3,000 of which are trucks.
The IIPD also received $24.5 million in funding from a $15 million-plus Competitive Freight Program Grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and additional funds from Cook County, the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago and Senator Tammy Duckworth. It’s the second major investment by IDOT at the port in recent years.
Erik Varela, Executive Director, Illinois International Port Authority
“Illinois is one of the nation’s largest transportation hubs. We’re proud of our ongoing partnership with the Port and we expect to see the impact of our investment on the global economy,” said BJ Murray, section chief of IDOT’s Aviation and Marine Transport Program.
Encompassing nearly 2,000 acres of industrial and recreational land, the IIPD contributes more than $700 million to the economy per year. It does so through its ship and rail ports that connect to Lake Michigan (part of Marine Highway 90) and St. Lawrence Seaway routing in one direction and, via the Lake Calumet Terminal six miles inland, to the Mississippi River and inland port network all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It is estimated that marine cargo activity being handled within the IIPD directly or indirectly supports 22,851 jobs within the state. Six Class I railroads provide service within the port district, which is also traversed by five Interstates, two U.S. highways and four state highways.
The magazine caught up with Erik Varela, executive director of the Illinois International Port Authority, as he attended the sold-out American Great Lakes Port Association annual conference in Chicago. He heard a statistic from American Association of Port Authorities: While federal spending since 2014 has increased by 77%, federal funding to support ports has increased by 394%. “It is a tremendous growth time for ports,” he says.
His family lives in Logan Square, a Northside community just west of I-90/I-94, so he understands the importance of reducing commute times to the far South Side.
“When those bridges are taking five or six minutes to raise or lower, you have truck traffic backed up,” he says. “The quicker we can get those bridges up and down, the quicker we can move those trucks and reduce congestion.”
There are few points in America where all forms of transport infrastructure converge so powerfully and internationally. “We are a true international port on the Great Lakes,” Varela says. “There is a huge interconnectivity and intermodal capability.”
The port welcomes vessels loaded with steel from Turkey, lumber cargoes from Germany and iron ore and lumber from Canada. At the Lake Calumet Terminal, loads of bulk sand, lime silicate and grain come in by barge and go out by rail or by truck. The Bishop Ford Expressway is adjacent. Varela says that it’s a spot where congestion is rare: “You can be in and out of my port in three minutes.” he says.
Tenants at the port include Kinder Morgan (ethanol and aircraft de-icer) and Tootsie Roll, which moves sugar through the port to its plant in Wisconsin. Mt. Carmel Stabilization years ago invested $14 million to retrofit the port’s original grain silos to hold lime silicate, which is shipped out by truck and rail to dry out the ground at development sites. Mt. Carmel and Tootsie Roll both recently extended their agreements by 10 years.
Funds from BIL and from IDOT through Rebuild Illinois will help Varela upgrade warehouses constructed when the IIPD began operation in the 1950s, repair pothole-pocked trucking roads and, he hopes, repair a dock wall that will allow a doubling of handling capacity. He sees great possibilities as the nation transitions from coal to renewables for his port to embody that transformation.
“As the Midwest looks at building wind farms, I want to make sure those components come to the Port of Illinois,” he says. “If those are being produced in Europe, they could come via the St. Lawrence Seaway. We could put those on a railcar or maybe even a barge, or ship them by the Mississippi River or rail lines to Mid-America and beyond.”
Further land development is a tantalizing prospect, he says, as IIPD, unlike many Great Lakes ports, still has an abundance of land to be developed. “But we are a port first and foremost,” Varela says, “using that multimodal connectivity.”
State officials know Illinois is a hub for a reason. Which is why Gov. Pritzker joined state and local officials at IDOT headquarters to announce the largest multi-year program to fix and repair infrastructure in state history: $40.99 billion over six years. It is part of the bipartisan Rebuild Illinois capital program that through year five has made approximately $12.1 billion of improvements statewide on 5,339 miles of highway, 533 bridges and 762 additional safety improvements.Moreover, the federal Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act will add an additional $17.8 billion into infrastructure projects funded by Rebuild Illinois.
“Over the next six years, we’re investing over $40 billion to improve all modes of transportation across our great state. That means better roads and bridges, modernized transit and aviation, and expanded and faster passenger rail service,” said Gov. Pritzker. “Rebuild Illinois has increased safety, efficiency, and opportunities for residents all over the state — and over the next few years, we will keep building on that progress, with all 102 counties of Illinois included in the multi-year program.”
