Michigan City, Ind., will give $10,000 to study train routes

The Redevelopment Commission voted to chip in $10,000 to look into alternative routes for the South Shore Line if the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District can get federal grant money for the study, the News-Dispatch reports. The money will help fund a proposed $1 million study of potential realignments of the South Shore Line. NICTD has said the agency and Michigan City would split the $200,000 local portion of the study funding, with the federal government providing the rest.

Even with NICTD and the
city agreeing to the local match, there is no guarantee that NICTD will receive
any funding from the highly competitive TIGER II grant program. The U.S.
Department of Transportation has set aside $600 million to provide grants for
transportation projects. A similar $1.5-billion program in 2009 received $60
billion in funding requests, according to the DOT website. With less money
available this time around, it could be even harder for grant seekers to win
TIGER II funding.

NICTD wants the money to
study alternatives to the South Shore Line’s current alignment along 11th
Street. Agency spokesman John Parsons has said the study will look into three
proposed routes – a northerly route, a new 10th-and-11th Street route or a
southerly route – to determine which is most feasible.

Another study of rerouting
the South Shore Line failed to materialize after U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly didn’t
seek a Congressional earmark for it.

In 2009, the northerly
route would have cost more than $200 million and creating the 10th-and-11th
Street tracks $65 million, according to NICTD officials quoted in agency
board-meeting minutes. The plans to relocate the South Shore Line near the CSX Transportation
tracks would also cost more than $65 million.

One plan to upgrade the
track along the 10th-and-11th street corridor would have required the purchase
of more than 100 privately owned buildings and the closing of 17 to 34 at-grade
crossings, according to a 2009 Common Council resolution.

A group of railroad
watchdogs recently proposed another northerly alignment, which would utilize
the path of the former Nickel Plate railway. Parsons has said the study may
look into alternative alignments of to the northerly route.