Last week I read your coverage of River Forest residents bothered by freight trains idling near their homes [WJ News, March 6].
My family lives in Forest Park along the Union Pacific tracks near Central Avenue and Lathrop. So we definitely empathize with what our neighbors in River Forest are saying — idling freight trains near homes is inhumane. To stop this, we need solidarity in River Forest, Forest Park and also Oak Park, since idling has been an issue there in the past. So far, Union Pacific has been dismissive of our calls to move the idling. But I believe if we work together we can compel them to move the idling to a non-residential stretch of tracks.
In 2015, Union Pacific designated the tracks about 300 feet from our home, and dozens of others, as its staging area for crew changes. That means locomotives idle there for hours each day while one crew gets off the train and another arrives to board it.
Since fall 2022, the idling has intensified. In 2023, about 450 trains idled here. So far in 2024 we’ve endured more than 240 hours of idling trains (88 trains total). The noise is disruptive, but we also worry about the health impacts of breathing diesel fumes, which we sometimes smell inside of our house.
I am calling on our elected leaders to work together across municipal boundaries to solve this problem. If the villages of River Forest and Forest Park don’t coordinate on this issue, we’ll end up playing “hot potato” with idling trains, passing them back and forth based on whoever is complaining most loudly at the moment.
But we can’t give one neighborhood peace at the expense of another down the tracks. Our leaders need to stand up to Union Pacific as a united front so everyone along the tracks can live in peace.
Caitlin Hillyard
Forest Park