Rides of the South Shore Line will cost more starting July 1.
The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District board, which oversees the South Shore Line, unanimously approved a 5 percent fare increase on Friday.
The railroad’s management, which proposed the increase earlier this year, said the new income will help pay for the additional cost of running Positive Train Control (PTC), a safety system for stopping a train if the engineer can’t.
Eighteen people attended five NICTD public hearings on the fare increase. Most didn’t object to the increase and favored the safety improvement, according to Michael Noland, the South Shore Line’s president. He said some objections to the increase came from people who commented on email or social media.
The $100 million PTC system is being installed on South Shore cars and along the line. The management expects it to be in operation by the end of this year. The federal government requires PTC on all railroads but isn’t helping to pay for it.
Keeping the South Shore Line in good operating shape is “critically important,” said Jim Biggs, a Porter County representative on the NICTD board.
Also Friday:
• Noland said the railroad hopes to get a good Federal Transit Administration rating on its two major capital projects by this fall. Those are the $661 million West Lake extension from Hammond to Dyer and the $321 million double-track installation between Gary and Michigan City. A good rating is critical to getting Congress to approve funding.
The current work includes finishing an environmental impact statement on the double-track project and convincing the FTA that all the local matching funding for the grants is in place. The local funding is complex, Noland said, because it includes three state statutes as well as multi-year agreements by the state legislature, the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, and LaPorte and St. Joseph counties.
NICTD hopes its projects are included in the federal budget for the 2019 fiscal year.
• The board picked Gariup Construction Co., Gary, to make nearly $2 million in repairs to the Gary Metro station. The work includes new elevator, stairs and roof. A frequently broken escalator will be removed, and the station entrance will be improved.
The city of Gary owns the Metro station, Noland said, but the work is critical and the railroad decided to do it now. “It serves our riders,” he said, “so we’re moving forward with it.”
The work will begin in about a month. Gariup’s $1,932,500 bid was the lower of two submitted.
• The board approved a five-year lease for a new diesel locomotive, with an option to buy, for $632,000. It will be available if a passenger train loses power, as happened Jan 12, 2017, when an ice storm brought power lines down and stranded a South Shore train for more than three hours.
NICTD board member David Pranckus, a South Shore engineer, said excessive heat, as well as ice, also can cause problems with the lines.
The locomotive will be stationed in Gary and also will be used for work trains, Noland said.