Buffett Takes on Chicago Chokepoint With Burlington

Bloomberg reports:

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates face a roadblock on the route toward payoff on their investment in U.S. freight transportation.

Chicago, whose railroads made it hog butcher for the world a century ago, is a tangle of bottlenecks where a quarter of the nation’s rail freight stalls while trying to navigate the city.

“We can’t keep running trains from Los Angeles to Chicago in 55 hours and then take 36 hours to get a rail car from one side of Chicago to the next,” said Matt Rose, chief executive officer of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. “We either need to fix Chicago or avoid it.”

For Buffett, 79, a solution could help overcome skepticism about his $26 billion bid for Burlington, which shareholders are to vote on tomorrow. For the Chicago area, speedier passage could head off a loss of rail traffic, jobs and tax revenue when the city is coping with a drop in trade-show business.

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