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Joseph Schwieterman 24 Coalition Politics at America’s Premier Transportation Hub AT THE HEIGHT of the railroad era, Carl Sandburg described Chicago as a “Player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler.” Sandburg admired the city for its brawny character , its enterprising spirit, and its seemingly boundless industrial capacity. More than 80 years later, the city immortalized by Sandburg remains the country’s busiest freight and passenger interchange. By most commonly accepted measures, Chicago’s dominance in the transportation industry extends from the airline and railroad industries to commercial trucking. Despite a declineofheavyindustryintheGreatLakesregion , the bankruptcies of some of its largest common carriers, and economic changes favoring more southerly cities, Chicago is still widely considered the railroad capital of the world and the continent’s leading aviation hub. The city’s location at the southern end of Lake Michigan has made it a natural transportation crossroads (Cronon 1991; Young 1998, 2003). The future, however, promises to be much differentfromthepast.Patternsofglobalization, the restructuring of American transportation, and the region’s changing industrial character are shifting the contours of Chicago transportation . In aviation, the expansion and transformation of commercial air travel is necessitating a reassessment of the city’s terminals and runways . In rail transportation, the excess capacity once so prevalent on main lines and in terminals has been absorbed by escalating tonnage moving between international points as well as between various parts of the United States. Support for the development of a high-speed system of passenger trains, meanwhile, is being fueled by rising congestion on expressways and arterial highways. Broad coalitions of governmental and nongovernmental organizations are leading the push to expand Chicago’s intercity transportation system. These strategic alliances weigh heavily in the battles over the direction of public policy that take place between the city and its suburbs as well as between public agencies and residential populations. Years ago, the role of coalitions was less prominent on the transportation scene. As recently as the 1960s, private companies and the city government of Chicago (with assistance from the federal government) were, for all practical purposes, unilateral decision makers in air and rail planning. Although coalitions of governmental, private, and nonpro fit organizations exerted influence over decisions , responsibility and leadership rested principally with Chicago officials and private firms. The landscape of transportation planning dramatically changed after voters approved the creationofthe RegionalTransportationAuthority (RTA) in 1974, a milestone in the evolution of intergovernmental relations in northeastern Illinois. The RTA was given responsibility for public transportation in a six-county area and had a board of directors that included representatives from both the city and suburbs. The agency had a mandate to balance the needs of constituencies that had previously shown little interest in cooperation. By the early 1980s, other intergovernmental initiatives had been formed for the purpose of pursuing shared transportation goals. Coalition Politics at America’s Premier Transportation Hub 287 Today, coalitions that promote and plan investments in intercity transportation facilities are an accepted part of the political landscape. From dueling coalitions involved in the airport expansion debate, to the largely disconnected coalitions pushing for rail-freight investments, and to the fragile coalition seeking to develop a high-speed regional rail system, the politicalenvironment facing transportation decisionmakers is both unpredictable and complex. THE PROBLEM OF AIRPORT EXPANSION Therecentpoliticsofairportexpansionintheregion underscore the difficulty of launching major transportation projects without the benefit of regional consensus. For more than 15 years, opinions have remained divided about the most effective way to handle the rising number of passengers moving through the city’s airports. Pressure to expand the region’s airport system has been almost continuous since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, which eliminated federal regulation controlling airline routes and fares. As carriers invested in major hub-and-spoke networks in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and other cities, prices dropped significantly and passengers received the benefits of greater schedule frequency and a wider choice of destinations (Morrison and Winston 1995). American Airlines and United Airlines made large investments in hub operations at O’Hare and, by the early 1980s, accounted for more than three-quarters of that airport’s passenger traffic. By the middle of the 1980s, significant congestion occurred during certain times of the day at O’Hare—a problem aggravated by the city’s severe weather and the less-than-optimal con- figuration of the airport’s existing runways. Between 1981 and 1988, the number of passengers boarding flights at the airport rose...

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