Canada's Transport Bottleneck In Chicago.

With 1300 trains a day in Chicago, and even with transit times down from 44 to 33 hours, it's still the biggest rail bottleneck on the continent.  40% of CP and 25% of CN traffic squeezes through the hub which is so famous most commodities are priced f.o.b. Chicago.   40% of that total traffic is dysfunctional scheduling of passenger trains.

"Shippers often lament that it can take just as long to get a product from Los Angeles to Chicago as it does to get that same product from one end of Chicago to the other". 

To understand how heavy commodities move in North America is to understand how six rail networks trade and compete their way through Chicago.   Thousands of containers switch to trucks daily to get by.

As Keith Creel, chief operating officer at CP, said:   “I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the past six or seven months explaining how congestion in Chicago affects my ability to move a potash train in Saskatchewan. It’s all connected,” 

CN has a special edge, having bought a railway you never heard of before, Elgin, Joliet and Eastern.   EJ&E routes through nearby Gary, Indiana  and let CN gain over 60% speed and volume.

Much of this information is from National Post's article Welcome To Chokepoint USA
Things to know: Item 1 a map showing rail networks by volume and Item 2, a breakdown of how goods are moved in the US.