CREATE partners break ground on 71st Street grade separation

Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) program partners on July 28 broke ground on the 71st Street and CSX grade separation (GS19), a major infrastructure project designed to improve safety and reduce congestion on Chicago's South Side.

The project calls for replacing the current crossing at 71st Street where it meets the CSX Forest Hill Flyover with a new grade-separated structure that carries the CSX line above a lowered 71st Street.

The 71st Street crossing sits along the Western Avenue Corridor, where 30 Metra SouthWest service trains and roughly 35 freight trains operate daily, CREATE officials said in a press release.

GS19 is one of four projects that make up the 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project (75th Street CIP), the most complex part of the larger CREATE program. These four projects are being implemented together due to their logistical and environmental commonalities as well as their proximity, CREATE officials said.

The Forest Hill Flyover (P3) and GS19 projects have linked construction schedules. P3 was completed in November 2025; completion of GS19 is expected in late 2027.

The estimated $380 million cost of the two projects is anchored by a $132 million federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant awarded in 2018, augmented by more than $260 million in state, local and private railroad funding.

CREATE is a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Transportation, the state of Illinois, city of Chicago, Cook County, Metra, Amtrak, the Association of American Railroads, BNSF Railway, Belt Railway of Chicago, CN, CPKC, CSX, Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad Co., Norfolk Southern Railway and Union Pacific Railroad. The program's mission is to improve efficiency in the Chicago rail network. To date, 36 of 70 planned projects have been completed, CREATE officials said.