The 63rd Street Infiltration and Detention Project
The Intermodal Rail Yard on 63rd Street, a few miles south and west of Chicago, has been a fully functional intermodal facility for transferring containers of freight between trains and trucks in and around the city and the region for decades.
“The yard had been operating for a long time, but it hadn’t been paved,” says Eric Chow, a project engineer with Patrick Engineering in Chicago. “The surface was broken asphalt and millings, piled up and leveled out to provide a place for trucks and trailers to park. Not a lot of stormwater could infiltrate for water quality.
The 63rd Street Infiltration and Detention Project
The Intermodal Rail Yard on 63rd Street, a few miles south and west of Chicago, has been a fully functional intermodal facility for transferring containers of freight between trains and trucks in and around the city and the region for decades. “The yard had been operating for a long time, but it hadn’t been paved,” says Eric Chow, a project engineer with Patrick Engineering in Chicago. “The surface was broken asphalt and millings, piled up and leveled out to provide a place for trucks and trailers to park. Not a lot of stormwater could infiltrate for water quality. [text_ad] Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) light rail facility and an apartment complex. They were having flooding from this yard about once a year.”“They were gradually adding fill to the yard and it was causing flooding problems for the neighbors immediately to the east, a CTA When the owner of the yard, Norfolk Southern Railway Co., planned a retrofit, primarily to modernize the gate system, the project included paving the entire 47-acre site. The infiltration/detention project was designed to meet the city’s requirements to detain runoff and improve water quality. It uses permeable pipe to drain the entire site: the loading and unloading areas for inbound and outbound freight trains, the drive aisles, and the chassis storage areas, as well as under the containers and the side loaders that load and unload the trains. “The fact that we couldn’t put in a pond was challenging, but we wanted to maximize the available footprint for parking,” says Chow. One of the main drivers for the use of permeable pipe was the native sandy soil. Percolation tests in three different locations found that between 8 and 32 inches of runoff infiltrated in an hour. “The site is pretty close to the lake and the soil is very good for infiltration,” he says. “We wanted to use that native soil as much as possible.” The pipe has to withstand a tremendous amount of weight. Some 175,000 containers pass through the yard every year, with 12 inbound and 10 outbound trains, seven days a week. Norfolk Southern specified N-12 corrugated perforated HDPE pipe made by Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (ADS) in Hilliard, OH. “The railroad likes using HDPE, especially from ADS. They used it under their rail facility,” says Chow. The reasons include its strength and cost, and the ease of installation and shipping. In addition, because HDPE pipe is lightweight, there was no concern about it settling in the sandy soil. Although the surrounding area is built up, runoff on this side of the yard comes predominantly from onsite because stormwater infiltrates in the rail yard to the west. Chow and his team designed surface ponding in the parking areas to a maximum depth of approximately 1 foot, for a 100-year storm. It will draw down relatively quickly. They also designed an infiltration vault system, which they oversized to provide for future expansion for a small lot about a block away. The system is a configuration of three systems of pipe in different areas of the site for a total footprint of 84,000 + 20,000 + 28,000 square feet. This underground infiltration provides approximately 156,000 cubic feet of storage. RT Milord Company of Bridgeview, IL, was the general contractor for the project. The underground work began in the fall of 2012 and was completed in 2014. Time was a constraint by the end of 2013. “This is one of the main shipping facilities for UPS,” says Chow. “We were trying to get things done before the holidays. Most of the yard was in operation during construction. The contractor staged the parts that would stay open and closed.” Crews excavated to 13 feet. “Cover was an issue,” he says. “To provide enough strength, we had to design for heavy-duty loading.” Pipe of two different diameters was used: 7,600 feet of 24-inch pipe, and 2,500 feet of 36-inch pipe. One of the reasons was to balance the three systems. The other was because of constraints by the outlets to the city’s combined sewer system. The pipes were wrapped in geofabric to keep out fines, and then placed in an aggregate trench. The aggregate provides additional strength and helps with infiltration. Because of the extreme loading on the surface, Chow used precast concrete manifolds instead of HDPE pipe headers to connect the systems. He also used manhole covers designed for airports. “This was definitely a unique project,” he says. “I hadn’t worked on something that large and constrained before. The system is working well. We had a meeting with the locals and the residents of the adjacent apartment building, and there were no complaints about flooding.”Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) light rail facility and an apartment complex. They were having flooding from this yard about once a year.”“They were gradually adding fill to the yard and it was causing flooding problems for the neighbors immediately to the east, a CTA
When the owner of the yard, Norfolk Southern Railway Co., planned a retrofit, primarily to modernize the gate system, the project included paving the entire 47-acre site.
The infiltration/detention project was designed to meet the city’s requirements to detain runoff and improve water quality. It uses permeable pipe to drain the entire site: the loading and unloading areas for inbound and outbound freight trains, the drive aisles, and the chassis storage areas, as well as under the containers and the side loaders that load and unload the trains.
“The fact that we couldn’t put in a pond was challenging, but we wanted to maximize the available footprint for parking,” says Chow.
One of the main drivers for the use of permeable pipe was the native sandy soil. Percolation tests in three different locations found that between 8 and 32 inches of runoff infiltrated in an hour.
“The site is pretty close to the lake and the soil is very good for infiltration,” he says. “We wanted to use that native soil as much as possible.”
The pipe has to withstand a tremendous amount of weight. Some 175,000 containers pass through the yard every year, with 12 inbound and 10 outbound trains, seven days a week.
Norfolk Southern specified N-12 corrugated perforated HDPE pipe made by Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (ADS) in Hilliard, OH.
“The railroad likes using HDPE, especially from ADS. They used it under their rail facility,” says Chow. The reasons include its strength and cost, and the ease of installation and shipping. In addition, because HDPE pipe is lightweight, there was no concern about it settling in the sandy soil.
Although the surrounding area is built up, runoff on this side of the yard comes predominantly from onsite because stormwater infiltrates in the rail yard to the west.
Chow and his team designed surface ponding in the parking areas to a maximum depth of approximately 1 foot, for a 100-year storm. It will draw down relatively quickly.
They also designed an infiltration vault system, which they oversized to provide for future expansion for a small lot about a block away. The system is a configuration of three systems of pipe in different areas of the site for a total footprint of 84,000 + 20,000 + 28,000 square feet. This underground infiltration provides approximately 156,000 cubic feet of storage.
RT Milord Company of Bridgeview, IL, was the general contractor for the project.
The underground work began in the fall of 2012 and was completed in 2014. Time was a constraint by the end of 2013.
“This is one of the main shipping facilities for UPS,” says Chow. “We were trying to get things done before the holidays. Most of the yard was in operation during construction. The contractor staged the parts that would stay open and closed.”
Crews excavated to 13 feet. “Cover was an issue,” he says. “To provide enough strength, we had to design for heavy-duty loading.” Pipe of two different diameters was used: 7,600 feet of 24-inch pipe, and 2,500 feet of 36-inch pipe. One of the reasons was to balance the three systems. The other was because of constraints by the outlets to the city’s combined sewer system.
The pipes were wrapped in geofabric to keep out fines, and then placed in an aggregate trench. The aggregate provides additional strength and helps with infiltration.
Because of the extreme loading on the surface, Chow used precast concrete manifolds instead of HDPE pipe headers to connect the systems. He also used manhole covers designed for airports.
“This was definitely a unique project,” he says. “I hadn’t worked on something that large and constrained before. The system is working well. We had a meeting with the locals and the residents of the adjacent apartment building, and there were no complaints about flooding.”
