Editorial: STB has much to consider in deciding CN's responsibility for delays

It's hard not to sympathize with Barrington. Since CN took over the EJ&E railroad in 2008 and started rerouting freight trains from Chicago and inner suburbs like Des Plaines to the outer ring, Barrington has seen four times the number of trains on a daily basis.

That's a lot of trains for the leafy, peaceful community to absorb. What's more, these trains have more cars than their predecessors and they close crossings for longer periods of time.

Barrington and the state, with support from U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, are asking the federal Surface Transportation Board to subject CN to an additional two years of monitoring. The railroad has been monitored since 2009, already an unprecedented amount of time, and must report the number of times a train blocks a crossing for 10 minutes or more.

Our transportation writer Marni Pyke reported Monday that in November alone, there were 1,245 delays of 10 minutes or longer along the entire former EJ&E line. At the Route 14 crossing in Barrington - where the village has proposed an underpass - the blockages are considerably fewer, but consider this: At the Otis Road and Cuba Road crossings just outside of town, there have been 323 and 636 blockages, respectively, of 10 minutes or more between March 2009 and September 2016. Barrington's gain has been the rural area's loss.

The stalemate between Barrington and CN is now in the hands of the STB, which must decide whether to side with Barrington and extend the monitoring period and - possibly more important to the village - whether CN should contribute all or part of the $37.5 million hole Barrington has in its underpass project budget. It's worth noting that in 2008 the STB ordered CN to pay 78 percent and 68 percent, respectively, of the costs of overpasses in Lynwood and Aurora.

We sympathize with Barrington, but at the same time, the monitoring should not become punitive. Given the number of 10-minute delays still being recorded, there's reason to justify perhaps another year of monitoring, but not two. The number of delays has decreased over the years; ideally the numbers can fall even further in one more year.

CN isn't Barrington's enemy here. Accommodations on both sides have been made and will continue to be.

But there's going to be more rail traffic, not less. The Route 14 underpass will be important to giving the Barrington community back something it has lost, and the STB needs to consider that, too.