Last week, I sent a letter to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) asking it to gather more information on the potential impacts of the proposed Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern (CPKC) Railway merger through a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the greater Chicago area. Before the STB takes any further actions in its review of the merger, the STB needs this comprehensive assessment of the agreement’s potential negative impacts on our region. As the largest metropolitan area affected by the proposed merger, the Chicagoland region faces greater consequences from this merger than any other area of the country.
Studies have already shown that the proposed merger would nearly quadruple the number of freight trains running on the Milwaukee District West line that runs from Elgin to Bensenville, increasing the total number from three to eleven on a daily basis. This would significantly slow Metra services, which use the same tracks. However, even that estimate of the traffic increase may be low, as Metra, Canadian National, and other organizations have noted based on their own research. These freight trains average nearly two miles in length, posing a significant obstacle to traffic and emergency responders. In Itasca for example, a single train is long enough to block all 4 of the village’s crossings simultaneously. This poses special risks to portions of communities on the other side of the tracks from emergency services. According to Itasca’s Fire Chief, if a freight train blocks the crossings in Itasca, a response that would normally take 1 minute and 15 seconds would take 14 minutes instead.
But the issue of these emergency crossings isn’t even addressed in the draft EIS the Surface Transportation Board currently has. In this initial report, the STB only considered the risks that come from blocking railroad crossings at 28 crossings across the entire country, and none in Illinois, even though our area of the state— by itself— has 54 crossings. The absence of any analysis of impact on emergency response vehicles at these crossings makes the current analysis that the STB is using unacceptable and incomplete. The estimated traffic increases provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway also do not address discrepancies with outside projections that must be addressed. The proposed merger poses enormous potential risks to our communities, and it is essential that the STB has the most accurate information available to assess those dangers and determine any mitigation measures that are needed. That’s why Senator Durbin and I have already publicly called for a new supplemental EIS to provide accurate information on the merger’s likely effects on the Chicago area, and why I conveyed that request to the board through my letter last week. You can read my full letter here.
|
|
|
|
|
Congressman Krishnamoorthi, Sen. Dick Durbin, and local mayors at a press briefing in Schaumburg where he requested a supplemental EIS.
|
|
As the popular social media app TikTok continues to grow in the United States, especially among young people, the questions surrounding its data collection practices and use as an intelligence-gathering tool by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continue to accumulate. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company, ByteDance, which is required by the laws of the People’s Republic of China to not only “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence” while not disclosing how it does so, but also to provide the CCP-controlled government with all the algorithms it uses to operate the platform. This combination of intelligence-gathering and algorithmic control allows the CCP to potentially use the platform to gather intelligence on users and to control what content they see, such as early in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when TikTok was accused of promoting Russian propaganda. However, because of the company’s own secrecy and CCP’s gag rule, we still don’t know the full scale and nature of the data the app is collecting on users. As I told Fox News last week, Americans need to assume the worst in these situations with regard to privacy risks and exposure to curated propaganda. While these risks are real, so is the growing bipartisan support for further investigating TikTok, and I’m glad to join my colleagues from both parties in protecting Americans’ privacy.
|
|
|
|
|
Congressman Krishnamoorthi speaks to Fox News about the growing concerns surrounding the CCP’s involvement in TikTok’s collection of individuals’ personal data (click the image above to see the congressman’s full interview and read the full story).
|
|
Less than two weeks remain for middle and high school students to register and submit their apps for this year’s Congressional App Challenge. In 2015, the House of Representatives launched the Congressional App Challenge to promote engagement in computer science among young people by creating an opportunity for middle and high school students to compete with peers by creating their own applications for computers, the web, tablets, phones, or other devices. I encourage all interested students in our district to participate, whether individually or in groups of up to four. The winner will be featured online at CongressionalAppChallenge.us and the winning app will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. To participate, submit your design here by 11:00am CT on Tuesday, November 1st.
|
The best way to stay up to date on these issues beyond our newsletter is through my social media accounts, which I update multiple times each day. You can follow my Twitter here, my Facebook page here, and my Instagram here. Thank you for staying engaged in our community.
|
P.S. I always enjoy hearing from constituents, so feel free to comment and share my social media posts! Here are the links: Twitter here, Facebook page here, and Instagram here. |
|
