Because of the high number of weekend passengers and variability of demand, the South Shore will not provide shuttle bus service between South Bend and Gary Metro Center.

NICTD is beginning Phase 2 of its overhead wire modernization program between Michigan City and Gary. This $18-million, three-year project will replace more than 100 miles of electrical conductor, some of which dates back to the 1920s. This wire is old and brittle and subject to failure.  These failures are the single leading cause of significant service disruptions and lengthy train delays.

The construction plan calls for the contractor to upgrade many of the components under traffic. However, the contractor must have uninterrupted weekend access to the track in order to remove old wire and suspend new wire. Nearly all of Phase 2 work to be performed is in single-track territory requiring temporary weekend service outages.