The record
What we know about the O’Hare Flyer/Great Western Railroad.
Everything here comes from the developers’ own statements, their September 3, 2026 presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, or published reporting. If something is unconfirmed, we say so. The O’Hare Flyer is the name its corporate political insiders market; the same track would carry freight at night under a second company, Great Western Railroad, so we use both names.
The proposalWhat is being proposed.
An express passenger railroad between O’Hare Terminal 2 and a downtown terminus at the Old Post Office, near Van Buren and Canal streets. Fifteen minutes end to end, $2.25 billion to build. The O’Hare Flyer developers announced it on August 25, 2026, after roughly three years of private planning. Nobody living along the route was told during those three years. They learned about it the way everyone else did, from a press release.
The trains would be battery powered, with motors under the passenger cars rather than in a locomotive, and would average about 80 mph over 20 miles of track. The developers say the CSX stretch along the Eisenhower “operated at 110” and is “designed for 125,” and that trains would be “slower during some of the residential areas.” They have not said how much slower, or where. Much of that track runs within a few dozen feet of houses, schools, parks, and a county forest preserve, none of which appear in the renderings.
Two companies are involved. The O’Hare Flyer would run the passengers and is the only name in the public materials. They describe Great Western Railroad as a Class III railroad. That is accurate and it means less than it sounds. The classes are revenue brackets set by the Surface Transportation Board, nothing more: Class III covers any railroad earning below roughly $50 million a year, so a company with no revenue at all qualifies on day one. Great Western was formed for this project and has no track, no locomotives, and no operations or revenue reported. What the designation does give it is the legal standing of a railroad, which is what lets it enter agreements with the three companies that own the track. It would also carry freight: a few cars of flour or corn syrup at a time, the O’Hare Flyer developers say, moved overnight by a battery-electric switcher. How many cars, how many trains, and for how many hours, they have not said, which is a notable omission for a company that has had three years to work it out. A loaded freight car can weigh more than 200,000 pounds, and one car of flour holds roughly what four semi-trailers carry.
Sources: the developers’ announcement of August 25, 2026; the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026; Executives’ Club of Chicago webinar, October 2, 2026; Crain’s Chicago Business.
The routeTwenty miles, Eleven Impacted Communities.
The alignment would be pieced together from track owned by Union Pacific, CSX, and Canadian National, joining city-owned track beneath Canal Street for the last stretch downtown. No alignment has been filed with any agency.
The amount of new track has grown as the plan has developed. At the August 25 launch the developers said about a mile and a half. On September 10 it was “an 18-mile rehabilitation with two and a half miles of new track.” On October 1 in Forest Park: “we’re not using their tracks … putting in brand new tracks that would run from the downtown all the way up to the airport,” on “a portion of their right of way.”
The track plan, as the developers have described it: on September 3, a dedicated single track for most of the route, with a six-mile passing section and “100% end-to-end control”; north of Junction B-12 in Franklin Park, “a reasonable possibility” of leasing one of Canadian National’s existing tracks, on a corridor that already carries Metra and freight. On October 1, at the Thatcher Woods table in Forest Park, their representatives described laying a second track beside the first, after feedback that a single track carried too much risk. How far that second track would extend — whether it continues through River Forest, and what it does to the width of the berm there — has not been stated.
From downtown the line runs west, parallel to and south of the Eisenhower, then turns northwest toward the airport. These are the communities on it, and what sits beside the track in each:
Eleven communities are on this route. Two were briefed before it was announced.
Sources: the developers’ announcement of August 25, 2026; the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026; Eric Zorn, The Picayune Sentinel, September 10, 2026; Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026; the developers’ published route map; Wednesday Journal, September 1, 2026.
Hours and frequencyHow the line would run.
Trains would run every 15 minutes in each direction from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
Asked on the September 3 call what that means at a crossing, the O’Hare Flyer developers confirmed a train would pass roughly every seven and a half minutes. That is about 144 trains a day past any point on the line.
The six hours after 10 p.m. are not quiet. That is when Great Western would move its freight, and when crews would grind rail, weld, run work trains, and light the corridor to rebuild and repair track. The loudest work a railroad does would happen while the people beside it are trying to sleep. The marketing does not mention this part.
What the developers have said about that freight: on September 3, that there is “no freight on our line” in the sense of an outside operator, and that they would deliver cars to “a few freight customers” themselves, overnight. On September 10, “to serve a few businesses there will be some light freight traffic on the line when we’re not in operation”: CSX has four small customers on the route and Canadian National one. On October 1, “there’s no freight in residential areas,” it runs “down in the ditch … by the expressway by Forest Park.” Asked whether that meant the CSX segment through the city neighborhoods: “I don’t know it at that level.” Where the overnight freight runs past Pilsen, Little Italy and North Lawndale, and how often, has not been answered.
They call it an 18-hour passenger service. It would be a 24-hour railroad.
Sources: the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026 (question-and-answer session); Eric Zorn, The Picayune Sentinel, September 10, 2026; Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026; Village of River Forest, public statements by Village President Cathy Adduci.
Public healthWhat a railroad does to the people beside it.
The O’Hare Flyer developers have done no sound study, no vibration study, and no air quality study, so nothing below comes from them. It comes from the published research on what railroads do to the people who live along them.
Noise. Railway noise above 40 decibels is associated with cardiovascular effects: ischemic heart disease and heart attack, hypertension, stroke, and disrupted sleep. At 55 decibels, chronic exposure is treated as a serious health concern. The World Health Organization recommends staying below 55 decibels and sets 40 decibels as the target for public health. A train every seven and a half minutes, eighteen hours a day, is not an occasional event; it is the sound environment.
Light. Overnight freight and track work would bring floodlighting to the corridor. Artificial light at night is linked in the research to insomnia, disrupted circadian rhythm, cardiovascular disease, and cardiometabolic disease including obesity and diabetes.
Vibration. Vibration from passing trains disrupts sleep and raises heart rate, and sustained exposure places strain on the heart. Lundy has said the vibration analysis has not been done.
Air. Battery power removes the diesel exhaust and not the rest. Brake and wheel wear and electrical discharge release particulate matter carrying iron, chromium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and cadmium into the air beside the track.
The Brightline record. Florida’s privately operated Brightline has been involved in 196 deaths from the start of service in 2017 through 2025, about one every 13 days, most of them at street-level crossings, according to an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN.
“Whisper quiet.” The phrase the developers use describes the battery propulsion. It says nothing about wheel on rail, crossing bells, vibration through century-old masonry, or the horns federal law requires at every crossing left in the street. The first public request for a decibel figure, and for the study behind it, came at the Forest Park meeting on October 1. None was given.
A train every seven and a half minutes, eighteen hours a day, is not an event. It is the environment you live in.
Sources: World Health Organization environmental noise guidelines; RIVM; Bożejko et al., Environmental Research, 2023; Cho et al., Chronobiology International, 2015; Ramos et al., Preventing Chronic Disease, 2023; peer-reviewed research on railway vibration and sleep (PMC5433882, PMC5858448); Miami Herald and WLRN, “Killer Train” investigation, December 30, 2025; Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026 (public comment); FRA train horn rule, 49 CFR Part 222.
Safety ConcernsStreet-level crossings.
Ten crossings on the route are at street level today: the six below and four in River Forest. Crossings that stay at grade would get four-quadrant gates, down about 40 seconds per train by the O’Hare Flyer’s own figure. At 144 trains a day that is roughly an hour and 36 minutes of closed road every day, at every crossing that stays in the street, for as long as the railroad runs.
Madison Street
A major commerce center. An at-grade crossing presents an incredible safety hazard on such a busy road. The developers say it would be grade-separated “with IDOT” — the state transportation department — “as we first start this program.” That is state money and state approval. Neither is on file.
First Avenue
A major trucking route. Trucks and high speed trains don’t mix.
Fifth Avenue
Directly beside Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, a Level II Trauma Center. A closed gate blocks southbound access to the hospital for ambulances and anyone driving there.
George Street
Blocked more than 90 minutes a day, by the developers’ own figures.
Belmont Avenue
A through street that closes with every train.
Fullerton Avenue
Directly next to a playground.
Four crossings
Children cross these tracks to reach school. Elevating all four means four bridges through a residential village.
Removing crossings from the street means building a bridge. Each one is a separate structure, with its own cost, its own funding, and its own yearslong construction process disturbing the street’s foot and auto traffic.
Where the track would be raised instead on a berm, as proposed through River Forest, the structure is not a bridge but 15 feet of fill running the length of the village. Fill placed in a floodplain displaces water, and the water has to go somewhere. This corridor sits beside the Des Plaines River and the county forest preserve, where the water table is already high and basements already flood in a hard rain. Nobody has published a drainage or hydrology analysis showing where that displaced water would end up, or whose basement it would end up in.
For First Avenue, Fifth Avenue, George Street and the Franklin Park crossing, the developers’ own words on September 3 were that they “would like to have [them] separated” by the Illinois Commerce Commission, “but we will be upgrading those to four-quad gates if it is not done in time for us to go into service.” At Chestnut Street they say they intend to ask that the crossing be closed.
Horns. Federal rule requires a train horn at every public crossing left in the street: 96 to 110 decibels, sounded for 15 to 20 seconds before each train, day or night. The only exception is a quiet zone, which a village must apply for and pay for. At 144 trains a day, that is the sound of every crossing that stays at grade.
The developers have not yet committed to any bridges in writing, which means that as the plan stands today, every one of these ten crossings stays in the street. They describe this northern stretch as an industrial corridor. It passes homes, a playground, ballfields, a commercial district, and a level II trauma center hospital campus. It crosses a state highway (1st Avenue/IL 171). Anyone who drives there knows that.
Sources: the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026, including the developers’ gate-timing figure; residents’ review of the alignment at street level; Village of River Forest; FRA train horn rule, 49 CFR Part 222.
The forest preserveThatcher Woods.
The route enters the Thatcher Woods forest preserve on an elevated structure, slopes down to ground level inside it, and runs beside the Des Plaines River. Thatcher Woods is 245 acres of floodplain forest, oak savanna, and prairie that Cook County set aside to protect. The Forest Preserves of Cook County count more than 250 native plant species there and at least 45 species of nesting birds, among them the wood thrush, ovenbird, scarlet tanager, Baltimore oriole, wood duck, broad-winged hawk, and kingfisher. Great blue herons and great egrets feed in its lagoon and flooded lowlands. Pileated woodpeckers nest in its trees. White-tailed deer and painted turtles live along the river.
At the Forest Park meeting on October 1, the developers’ representatives said the plan through the woods is to remove the existing track and lay two: “originally there were two sets of tracks … about 20 years ago they removed one set. So we would bring back the second set of tracks” — a second track, described after feedback that running the service on a single track carried too much risk, and which Canadian National “would have to explicitly agree” to. The woods are where the second track was first described; whether it continues beyond them has not been said. The berm at Thatcher Avenue would slope back to ground “in the forest preserve.” Asked for data: “we don’t have anything finalized.” Asked whether an independent wildlife study would be done: “we’ll follow their lead” — the Forest Preserve District’s. Asked whether the District was “all fine with it”: “No, that’s not what I said … I cannot speak for the forest preserve.”
Cook County Commissioner Maggie Trevor wrote to the developers on September 10 that the route “will bisect Thatcher Woods, one of the most important natural areas in the Forest Preserve system,” and demanded a comprehensive environmental assessment. The Forest Preserve District itself has taken no public position.
The developers propose to carry the line over Thatcher Avenue on an elevated structure. Building it means major construction inside the preserve: the berm, the piers, the crossing itself, and the staging and access to reach them. Three bird species of conservation concern nest in Thatcher Woods. The Des Plaines River corridor is part of the Mississippi Flyway, one of the continent’s principal migration routes, and the birds that use it are protected under Federal law. A raised railroad with a sound wall on top, running the length of the corridor with a train every seven and a half minutes, would cut that corridor in two and put a barrier in the path of everything that moves along it.
Construction carries its own cost. A project of this scale is estimated to release on the order of a million metric tons of carbon dioxide in construction alone, with tens of thousands of tons more in maintenance over its life. No life cycle analysis has been published. Neither has anything on soil contamination from rail wear, metal corrosion, and oil and lubricant seepage into ground and groundwater, on track runoff into an already elevated floodplain, or on the herbicides used to keep vegetation off a right of way.
The corridor is also about to become more used, not less. The Des Plaines River Trail extension, funded with public money and partly routed through River Forest, is designed to connect the Des Plaines River Trail to the Illinois Prairie Path. The line would cross it.
Through this preserve the O’Hare Flyer proposes to run a train every seven and a half minutes, eighteen hours a day, with freight and track work overnight. They say they have identified the birds and animals in the area and spoken with federal regulators. Identifying them is not the same as studying what construction, a 15-foot berm, and 144 trains a day would do to them, and that study has not been done.
Two hundred and forty-five acres the county set aside to protect, crossed by a train every seven and a half minutes.
Sources: Forest Preserves of Cook County, Thatcher Woods, and the Des Plaines River Trail extension; Chicago Bird Alliance; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Mississippi Flyway; the developers’ River Forest design as presented September 3, 2026; the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026 (question-and-answer session); Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026 (Thatcher Woods station); Cook County Commissioner Maggie Trevor, letter of September 10, 2026.
MoneyWho pays.
In the developers’ words: on September 3, “a private initiative. We are not using public money”; on October 1, “we are not seeking an operating subsidy” and “our advisors believe … commercial revenues can fund the operations.” The capital side is a separate question, and it is the one below.
The O’Hare Flyer is described by its sponsors as privately funded, with no operating subsidy and no money from the CTA, Metra, or the RTA. That is the plan for the first stage only. Once the line is built, the developers intend to apply for a U.S. Department of Transportation loan that would replace about three quarters of their commercial financing with long-term government debt at Treasury rates.
The program is almost certainly RRIF, the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program run by the U.S. Department of Transportation. RRIF lends at Treasury rates, covers up to 100 percent of a project, runs as long as 35 years, and can be used to refinance debt already taken on. It is the cheapest money in American infrastructure, and it is public credit.
In plain terms: private investors take the upside, and the public balance sheet takes the risk. This is what corporate political insiders know how to build.
Here is what that would cost the rest of us. RRIF is public credit, backed by federal taxpayers, and state and local governments, transit authorities and public corporations are eligible to borrow from it. Metra and the CTA can apply to the same program, at the same rates, for the track and signals and stations that carry the people who live here every day. If a private airport express borrows on those terms and its fares fall short, the public lender is left holding the risk. The choice is not between this railroad and nothing. It is between this railroad and the trains our communities already ride.
Who is funding the project today is undisclosed. The developers say one private round has closed and a second is under way. Asked on September 3 what return they are promising investors: “we will not answer that question.” On October 2, to a business audience: “there are major funds out there ready to invest … those investors need to believe in the story … the civic voices that will rise up to say we want this … are going to be incredibly important to us.” A project asking eleven communities to absorb its costs has not said who stands to profit from it.
A RRIF loan can run as long as 75 years in some cases. Lundy has said publicly that the company would repay over 50-odd years. Set that against what passenger rail actually earns in this region: Metra, the public railroad, covers about 16 percent of its operating costs from fares. The rest is tax revenue. A private company proposing to carry its own capital costs, its own operating costs, and a Federal loan on ticket sales alone is making a claim that no comparable railroad here has ever met.
Florida’s Brightline is the closest thing to a test of that claim, and it is failing it. Brightline carries more than $5.5 billion in debt. In August 2026 it signed a restructuring support agreement with a bond insurer for at least $350 million in bankruptcy financing, the step that normally precedes a Chapter 11 filing. Its auditors had already warned of substantial doubt that it could maintain liquidity into 2027. On September 25, 2026, that restructuring closed: a deal giving Brightline about $490 million in new capital to reduce its debt, reported by the Associated Press. Ridership is not the problem: passenger numbers rose 16 percent year over year, and ticket and other revenue still did not cover operating expenses and debt interest.
Safety improvements along that same corridor were paid for largely with public money, and the service has been involved in 196 deaths from 2017 through 2025, about one every 13 days, according to an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN.
The near-bankrupt Brightline is the precedent. A private passenger railroad, built on debt, that cannot pay for itself even when the trains are full.
If the O’Hare Flyer follows it, the trains do not disappear. The debt gets restructured, the public credit is already committed, and the communities on the route are left with the railroad either way.
The political insiders behind the project
The three people behind the project are corporate political insiders. Dave Lundy, a lobbyist and entrepreneur, is chief executive of both companies and has deep local political ties. Mark Walbrun, the chief development officer, spent 50 years in rail, including 25 running capital projects for Amtrak. Kristi Lafleur, the third co-founder, ran the Chicago Skyway and was executive director of the Illinois Tollway. Between them they have spent careers inside the agencies, the toll authorities, and the lobbying offices that decide how public infrastructure gets financed, and this politically connected private corporation is built on that experience.
Sources: the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026; U.S. Department of Transportation, Build America Bureau, Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program terms and eligible borrowers; Metra budget documents; Bloomberg and the Bond Buyer on Brightline’s restructuring, 2026; Brightline 2025 annual report; Crain’s Chicago Business; the Chicago Tribune; the Miami Herald and WLRN investigation of Brightline, November–December 2025; public statements by Dave Lundy; Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026; Executives’ Club of Chicago webinar, October 2, 2026; Eric Zorn, The Picayune Sentinel, September 10, 2026; Associated Press, September 25, 2026, on Brightline’s restructuring.
GapsA disturbing lack of studies.
Three years in, and $2.25 billion on the table, the O’Hare Flyer developers confirmed on the September 3 call that none of the following exists. What they described instead was “an environmental scan … the important check to see if there are any environmental issues along the corridor” — a desk check, not a study. On October 1, asked for data: “we don’t have anything finalized.”
- A vibration study. Asked what an 80 mph train would do to nearby homes, Lundy said the analysis has not been performed.
- A sound study, including for the overnight hours. Nor an air quality study, though brake and wheel wear release particulate matter regardless of what powers the train.
- An environmental impact study or life cycle analysis. They have identified wildlife in the area and spoken with federal regulators. Neither study has been done. The route runs through Thatcher Woods and beside the Des Plaines River; the River Forest segment would sit on a 15-foot berm, and a berm is fill. Fill in a floodplain displaces water. No drainage analysis has been published, and no cross-section drawing showing that the berm fits the 66-foot right of way.
- A traffic study. Nothing on what 144 trains a day does to First Avenue, Belmont, Cicero, or any crossing inside the city.
- An emergency response study. Fifth Avenue sits beside Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, a Level II Trauma Center. Nobody has measured what a closed crossing does to ambulance times.
- A freight route study. First Avenue is a major trucking route. Nothing on repeated closures or on heavy trucks meeting a crossing used every seven and a half minutes.
- A comparison of alternatives. Asked what other routes were considered, the developers said there were none. The City of Chicago did that comparison in 2017 and the developers have not mentioned it. The route is the City’s own shelved Alternative 1 — see The City already studied this route. Eleven communities are being asked to accept a route on the word of the people who chose it.
- Agreements. The project needs three railroads, the City of Chicago, and the aviation authority. The developers hold a letter of intent with CSX and describe it as unusually detailed. It is not a contract. With Canadian National and Union Pacific they say they have a path to yes — on October 1, that CN had “indicated that there was a reasonable possibility” of leasing a track; on October 2, that the railroads “believe that there’s a path to getting those agreements in place.” Nothing is signed, and no route has been filed. The project is, at this point, a press release and a letter.
They say they have completed a ridership study and preliminary engineering. Two smaller questions are also open: whether the Chicago Avenue bridge, struck by trucks about once a month, is on the alignment (the presenters said no; a resident said yes), and whether Madison Street in Forest Park stays at grade, which residents have identified and merchants have not been told.
Two things the developers did commit to on the call: public open houses along the route, and welcoming an independent noise and vibration study not paid for by the project. Neither has been scheduled. We intend to hold them to both.
Three years of planning. Twenty miles. Eleven communities. Not one completed study of what it would do to them.
Sources: the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026 (question-and-answer session), in which each item above was confirmed by the developers; Forest Park community meeting, October 1, 2026; Executives’ Club of Chicago webinar, October 2, 2026.
The recordThe City already studied this route.
The developers present this corridor as new. The City studied it nine years ago. In February 2016 the Chicago Department of Aviation paid Parsons Brinckerhoff, now WSP, $2 million to identify routes, station sites and costs for an O’Hare express. On November 29, 2017 the Chicago Infrastructure Trust issued a request for qualifications carrying three surface alignments, each engineered to about 10 percent design. Alternative 1, the “CN–CSX Corridor,” ran from the east side of O’Hare down the Canadian National line through Junction B-12 in Franklin Park, across the Des Plaines River to Madison Street, then east along the CSX line beside the Eisenhower to a Union Station approach by Union Pacific’s Global One yard. That is the O’Hare Flyer’s route, down to the Global One site.
The City wrote down what it found on that corridor: “11 at-grade crossings (all with gates and signals), 28 railroad-over-street structures, and 2 structures over the Des Plaines River … (condition unknown)”; “a new flyover would be required at Junction B-12 to ensure reliability”; and “two new tracks from north of Junction B-12 to the downtown terminal.” The City “has no usage or purchase agreements” with the railroads, had “held preliminary conversations” with CSX, CN and UP, and reported that the owners “want to protect their existing and future operational flexibility.”
The City also wrote down its terms. No public funds, no TIF, no credit enhancement, no minimum-revenue guarantee. Right-of-way costs “borne solely by the selected Concessionaire.” Revenue sharing with the City. Minority- and women-owned business and project-labor requirements. And City Council approval as “a condition precedent to the execution of the P3 Agreement.”
Four teams responded in February 2018. In June 2018 the City chose a different proposal, a tunnel, and never signed a contract. In June 2019 Mayor Lightfoot called the idea that it could be built without city money “a total fantasy.” The procurement was never formally closed, and the Infrastructure Trust still lists it at the “Contracting” stage.
The City’s ridership study is also on the record. It counted 19,920 air travelers a day between O’Hare and downtown in 2015, both directions, every mode of travel, and forecast 35,300 by 2045. That is the entire market. The developers have published no ridership number.
STOP’s reading: the route is the City’s own shelved Alternative 1. The City paid to engineer it, wrote down its crossings, its structures and its railroad problems, and ran a competitive process with Council approval the last time anyone proposed using City property for this. The developers have not referred to it.
Sources: City of Chicago / Chicago Infrastructure Trust, O’Hare Express System procurement, 2017–18 — Request for Qualifications of November 29, 2017, Exhibit B (alignments) and Exhibit C (WSP ridership report, September 2017), respondent list, shortlist and selection announcement (chicagoinfrastructure.org); CBS Chicago, February 26, 2016; Chicago Sun-Times, March 20, 2018; Streetsblog Chicago, June 6, 2019.
EquityWhat their map leaves out.
The map the developers published shows two endpoints and a line between them. No towns. No neighborhoods. No forest preserve. The corridor is drawn as empty ground.
What is actually there: eleven communities, a Level II Trauma Center, schools, parks and playgrounds, a senior residence, a community college, a forest preserve, and thousands of homes. The company calls it an industrial corridor where no one will be bothered.
The plan follows the drawing. In River Forest, the sponsors have proposed eliminating all four crossings by carrying the line over them on a 15-foot berm that, with fencing and the rest of the structure on top, would stand about 27.5 feet high. Nothing comparable has been proposed for Madison Street in Forest Park, First and Fifth Avenue in Melrose Park, George Street in River Grove, or Belmont and Fullerton in Franklin Park. Those stay at street level, with gates down about ninety-six minutes a day. Fifth Avenue is the crossing beside the trauma center.
The city neighborhoods are not in the conversation at all. The line runs through the South Loop, the West Loop, Little Italy, Pilsen, North Lawndale and Homan Square. None of them has a village board that can pass a resolution, write to the sponsors, or hire a consultant. None has been offered a stop, a study, or a meeting.
One community on the route has been dangled the carrot of an ambiguous, possible stop that more than likely won’t happen. Ten have been offered exactly nothing.
The people along the line are not missing from the corridor. They are missing from the drawing.
Sources: the route as published by the developers; their statements and September 3, 2026 presentation.
The public alternativeThere are already two trains to O’Hare.
Metra already runs to O’Hare, and it has a plan to make that service frequent. In its draft Systemwide Network Plan, released in October 2026, Metra proposes what it calls Regional Rail 1.0: trains every 30 minutes, all day, seven days a week, between Union Station and its O’Hare Transfer station, where riders connect to the terminals on the airport’s people mover. It runs on the North Central Service route Metra already uses. It needs no new trains and no new right-of-way through our communities. Metra estimates about $100 million to build, for turning tracks and signals, and $18 million a year to run, in 2025 dollars.
Metra has done the planning and priced it. All it needs now is funding. The plan has no start date and no dedicated money yet, and that is the ask: fund Regional Rail 1.0.
Set that beside the O’Hare Flyer: $2.25 billion, according to its sponsors, on a route through eleven communities and a forest preserve, built for a private company. North of Franklin Park, both would need the same Canadian National track. Whether that track can carry Metra every 30 minutes and the Flyer as well is a question CN and Metra have not answered.
The CTA Blue Line is the second train. It runs into the O’Hare transit center, connected to Terminals 1, 2, and 3 by an underground walkway, and can be boarded at any of 33 stations. It is slow in stretches because of 70-year-old track, and the CTA has replacement work scheduled. Public money on this corridor would serve far more people on these two lines than on a nonstop between a downtown terminus and an airport. The public assets already exist. This plan would run past them.
More on Metra’s plan and the public alternative →
Sources: Metra, Systemwide Network Plan, draft Final Report, October 2026 (North Central Service corridor, p. 46); Chicago Transit Authority, Blue Line service and O’Hare station information; CTA capital program; the developers’ statements of September 3 and October 1, 2026.
Where it standsWho decides, and what officials have said.
The Illinois Commerce Commission has authority over grade crossings, and the Federal Railroad Administration and the Surface Transportation Board would review a project like this one. None of that review has begun, and none of it can begin yet. A federal proceeding follows agreements with the railroads, financing, and a filed route. The sponsors have a letter of intent with one railroad, no agreement with the other two, an unnamed loan program, and no alignment on file anywhere.
On October 2 the developers named the path themselves. Mark Walbrun: the Federal Railroad Administration, “qualifying us and Herzog … and for how the track is laid out”; “a requirement to go through the Surface Transportation Board for various aspects of the new service”; the Federal Aviation Administration “through the Airport Layout Plan program”; and the City’s Departments of Transportation and Aviation. Kristi Lafleur: “an agreement of some type with the city … some city council process.” Dave Lundy said the agencies in Washington, Springfield and the city had given “very positive responses.” Nothing has been filed with any of them.
The day before, at the Thatcher Woods table in Forest Park, a developers’ representative put it another way: “The bulk of the regulatory is federal … there are definitely companies out there that wouldn’t have a meeting like this because it’s federal.” Forest Park Commissioner Maria Maxham, from the other side of the table: “if you get rights to all the railways … it doesn’t matter what we say.”
The timeline, as stated: “as early as 2027” at the August 25 launch; “five years from now” on September 3; construction in 2028 and service in 2031 on September 10; “the next few months we’ll be finalizing” on October 2.
So there is no comment period open, no docket, and no decision pending. Anyone describing this as a project moving through its approvals is describing something that does not exist yet. What exists is a proposal, a press launch, and a group of political insiders hoping to profit off of the public.
If the time ever comes when a proceeding does open, it will take public comment, and that is the moment residents have. We are building our contact list now in case it ever gets that far, so that everyone on this route hears about it the day it happens.
Four governments are on record. Cook County Commissioner Maggie Trevor, September 10, demanding a comprehensive environmental assessment. The West Central Municipal Conference, 37 municipalities, September 11: “premature and potentially harmful” and “should not move forward in its current form.” Melrose Park Mayor Ronald Serpico, September 14, on First, Fifth and George crossed every few minutes with no separations proposed. And the River Forest Village Board. All four say the affected municipalities have not been given sufficient information or impact analyses. The letters are here.
On September 14, 2026, the River Forest Village Board voted unanimously for a resolution opposing the project and urging its sponsors to stop advancing it and explore alternative routes. More than 150 people filled the Fox Auditorium at Trinity High School; twenty spoke against the project during about ninety minutes of public comment, and one spoke for it. Village President Adduci had already told the sponsors and the village’s state legislators that River Forest cannot support the plan.
On October 1, 2026, Forest Park held its first public meeting on the project. Residents and union representatives spoke on both sides. Commissioner Maria Maxham said the village still lacks the specific data and in-depth analysis the discussion requires, and that without more information, support would be premature and irresponsible. She also said a project representative had told her the team expected to brief elected officials before going public, and did not. Commissioner Melin-Rogovin called the presentation a missed opportunity and said a project that is good for the region needs to be good for the communities it affects. Commissioner Jessica Voight said the board is still waiting on answers. Mayor Hoskins was the only member of Forest Park’s leadership to speak in favor, closing by saying he believes in what the team is doing. He had already spoken for the project at the first board meeting of the Northern Illinois Transit Authority on September 10, where he holds a seat. On October 1 he said that when the developers told him they were considering a stop, “I said, I have the perfect location for you” — the Village’s “underutilized parking lot,” to “jointly operate a parking lot that will bring valuable revenue to the Village,” and its “underperforming” community center as a station. He was briefed privately by two of the project’s founders on May 30, 2025 and asked to keep it confidential, roughly a year before residents learned of the project from a press release. The village said the meeting would be the first in a series.
Sources: Wednesday Journal, WGN, and ABC7, September 14–15, 2026; Village of River Forest; Forest Park village meeting, October 1, 2026. Page-wide: the O’Hare Flyer presentation to the High Speed Rail Alliance, September 3, 2026; public statements by project representatives; the Village of River Forest; and reporting in Crain’s Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune, WTTW, Block Club Chicago, Wednesday Journal, WGN, ABC7, the Miami Herald, and WLRN; Executives’ Club of Chicago webinar, October 2, 2026; Northern Illinois Transit Authority board meeting, September 10, 2026, as reported by the Sun-Times and WTTW; letters of Commissioner Maggie Trevor, the West Central Municipal Conference and Mayor Ronald Serpico.
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For a sourced list of the project’s problems, see ordflyer.com, a separate citizen project.