CHESTERTON – With the South Shore Line’s performance rates increasing, South Shore president Mike Noland said a 10 percent fare increase is reasonable.
“So, everybody’s got a role to play here,” Noland told the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District [NICTD] board at their March 31 meeting.
“Given the fact that we’re performing much, much better and we’ve added new trains every day on the weekdays, and we’ve improved the weekend service schedule as well, significantly, I think we can justify asking our riders to participate as part of the revenue structure,” he added.
Brought before and approved by the NICTD board on Jan. 27, South Shore riders can expect to see a fare hike of 10 percent hit at some point this year, as well as, Noland said, “small, structured fare increases to keep up with inflation as we move forward.”
Still recovering from the decline in ridership when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Noland said the South Shore has “always been very ... conservative” with their revenue; however, as of late, the rail line has “burned through our rainy-day fund.”
“We’re in good conversations with the General Assembly and with the administration to provide the necessary funding to keep up going, but we need to do our part as well,” he said.
Noland also reported that elected officials in Indianapolis, who were also curious about what the rail line was doing to help relieve their financial stress, are happy to hear about the incoming fare increase.
With the South Shore’s last fare increase occurring in 2018, Noland told the board at their January meeting that previous fare increases were viewed individually – be that one-ways, roundtrips, or package deals – and that some of the fare opportunities will not be subjected to the 10 percent hike.
“Some of those individual programs might not exactly make 10 percent. It’s a monthly overall goal of 10 percent,” he said in January.
The fare hike, according to Noland, is a reasonable action based on the South Shore’s improved performance since the Double Track NWI – the 26.6-mile stretch of double tracks and station improvements from Michigan City to Gray – opened for revenue service in May 2024.
When the Double Track NWI originally opened, he admitted that there was much to be desired from the South Shore’s performance, with the rail line performing at around 25 to 30 percent.
“We went through, and we kept communication with our riders and told them what we were doing to fix the issue. I will admit there was not a single minute of recovery in this schedule, and we had some built-in conflicts,” he said.
Revising the schedule in August last year, Noland said the South Shore saw an increase in performance between 50 to 65 percent, which the rail line continued to monitor until February and found “every opportunity where we could” make the schedule better.
“Putting more time in the schedule – that’s easy,” Noland said.
“We can fix our on-time performance by just putting 20 more minutes under the train schedule, and boom – we’re on time. That doesn’t do us any good, since we just invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the system,” he added.
And since the new schedule’s release on Feb. 18, Noland reported that “a number of days in the rush hour ... every single train is on time.”
“What we’re seeing from an on-time performance standpoint and from a reliability standpoint, we really have come a long way and we’re not done,” he said.
While some days Noland said the South Shore is performing at 100 percent, the overall goal is for the rail line to stay at a consistent 90 percent – a goal that will benefit the South Shore’s marketability and increase ridership.
In a chart comparing February’s ticket sales in 2025 with 2024’s numbers, the South Shore has already seen an increase of 28.5 percent in ticket purchases, which includes sales from the vending machine, conductor and mobile app; as well an accompanying increase of 27.1 percent in revenue.
Since 2019, NICTD’s director of strategic planning and grants Kelly Wenger reported that the South Shore has been able to recover roughly 60 percent of the revenue the rail line lost during the pandemic.
Additionally, Wenger reminded the board that the South Shore is currently in the process of updating the rail line’s 20-year strategic plan, which includes a passenger survey that is still being collected, that will be used to continue to improve the rail line.
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