Speaker
Description
The Chicago region is the largest inland port or dry port in North America, handling as many containers as Rotterdam in a year. While freight trains in the U.S. remain diesel-powered, there is considerable potential to transition to electric trucks for the many local trips that are part of the inland port. This paper is part of a larger research project that investigates how such a transition might reduce not only carbon emissions, but local pollutants that are concentrated in low-income, minority communities. In this portion of the project, we use a socio-technical transitions framework to understand the sociotechnical regime, niche, and landscape that will structure this transition. We focus in particular on the location of freight electrical vehicle charging stations, arguing that care must be taken to position such stations so that truck traffic does not further concentrate in already-burdened communities.
We compare two sites within the distributed spaces of the inland port of Chicago: Little Village and Will County. Little Village is a predominantly-Latino neighborhood on the west side of Chicago, with a history of welcoming Mexican immigrants while also suffering the negative effects of Chicago’s industrial productivity. As the regional economy has transitioned from manufacturing to distribution, Little Village has remained at the center of pollution exposure, now in the form of heavy-duty trucks. On the southwestern fringes of the metropolitan area, Will County is home to one of the earliest major inland ports in the country. In this rural location, air quality is less of a concern, but truck traffic still threatens the small towns and farmers nearby. In both cases, siting freight vehicle chargers where trucks already go will further exacerbate the local impacts of the global logistics industry, which is why a more comprehensive, equitable transition is needed.
Biography
Julie Cidell is a professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the social and political aspects of transportation infrastructure, including airports, railways, and freight and logistics. José Acosta-Cordova is a Ph.D. student in Geography at UIUC, as well as Senior Transportation Analyst for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. He studies the long-term impacts of Chicago’s role in trade and transportation networks on the communities of color that make those networks function, while advocating for policy change to reduce the burdens on those communities.
