FTA designation for Double Track ‘critical next step’

Plans to improve the South Shore Line’s service east of Gary received a major boost this week, as the Federal Transit Administration put the railroad’s Double Track project into its final engineering phase.

“It’s the FTA’s way of saying it has their stamp of approval,” South Shore President Michael Noland said Tuesday. “It really is the critical next step.”

The $416 million Double Track project would build a second set of mainline tracks between Gary and Michigan City. It also would make improvements at five stations, expand station parking lots, build nine new platforms, and close 21 atgrade crossings in Michigan City.

The second set of tracks would allow trains to run faster and more reliably than they could before, the railroad has said.

Noland expects the Double Track project will receive the FTA’s full funding approval in the spring of next year. Its expected completion date is the fall of 2023, or 2024 if complications arise.

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which oversees the South Shore, has been working with the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority and the Indiana Finance Authority on the project.

“The Double Track project is critical to reducing commuting time to Chicago and activating the potential for transformational development of the region,” RDA President and CEO Bill Hanna said in a news release.

Gov. Eric Holcomb, U.S. Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun, and U.S. Reps. Pete Visclosky and Jackie Walorski also issued similar statements

Noland said the FTA’s action this week means the South Shore can begin acquiring properties along the route, including a number of homes in Michigan City.

The South Shore will schedule meetings with affected property owners in the next couple of weeks, he said.

Noland was in Washington, D.C., for a Commuter Rail Coalition meeting when the FTA’s acting administrator, K. Jane Williams, called him with news of the Double Track project’s new status.

In October, the FTA put the South Shore’s other major project, the $816 million West Lake Corridor, into its final engineering phase.

West Lake is to be a new eight-mile rail link between Hammond and Dyer, along with four stations and a connection to the existing South Shore route to Chicago.

“The FTA really likes both projects,” Noland said.

The FTA’s Capital Investment Grant Program summary, submitted with the federal 2021 budget this week, lists both South Shore projects among six nationwide to enter the engineering phase.

The FTA gave both Indiana projects high ratings for local financial commitment, with state and local funding providing 62 percent of the projects’ cost. In past years, the usual split between federal and local funding for transit projects was 50-50.

Last year’s Indiana General Assembly session doubled the state’s previous funding commitment for the projects by $185 million, plus $20 million for contingencies.

Local funding for the Double Track project also comes from the RDA, representing Lake and Porter counties, and LaPorte and St. Joseph counties.