Rail-Volution rides into Northwest Indiana

Northwest Indiana is not the only place in the civilized world looking to improve commuter rail and public transit.

"Our history is very similar," said John Stewart, a top engineer with Gresham Smith and Partners, a Birmingham, Ala., engineering firm. "We had active steel mills but we've lost a lot of them.

"What we would like to do now is, we have abandoned rail lines and we'd like to use them for commuter rail."

Taken by South Shore commuter rail to East Chicago and then by bus to downtown Gary, Stewart said the scenes out the window, including blocks of empty lots and buildings in Gary, were much like what one sees in parts of the Birmingham area.

Stewart was one of about a dozen transportation planners and builders riding the South Shore Line into Northwest Indiana on Sunday afternoon in a workshop put on as part of Rail-Volution, a four-day conference in Chicago devoted to commuter rail.

Now in its 12th year, Rail-Volution is taking place in the Midwest for the first time, having been in Salt Lake City in 2005 and Los Angeles in 2004.

It attracts transportation supporters, planners, experts and those who would like to do business with them from around the world.

"People come to find out what is happening with transportation in the States and the world," said Phillip Turner, a transportation planner for Maroondah, Australia.

Like others on the tour, he was curious about the privatization of the Indiana Toll Road, which runs along the South Shore railroad in East Chicago. He noted that Melbourne's public transit system, which includes Maroondah, was privatized about eight years ago.

"It wasn't a very popular thing when it was privatized, I would have to say," Turner said.

Sunday's Northwest Indiana workshop, one of eight in the Chicago area Sunday, was organized by the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, operator of the South Shore.

The RDA is considering playing a major role if the South Shore is extended to Valparaiso and Lowell, a project with a price tag of more than $300 million.

The goal is to connect more of Northwest Indiana with the economic engine of Chicago and to improve transit connections within Northwest Indiana, according to John Parsons, the South Shore's marketing director.

The rail extension project has numerous hurdles to overcome, including demonstrating to the Federal Transit Administration that the project is worthy of funding and finding local money as well.

With the right public involvement and careful planning, such massive infrastructure projects can be done, according to David E. Wohlwill, lead transit planner with the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

Construction will begin in November on the $435 million North Shore Connector, which will run from Pittsburgh's central business district through twin tunnels under the Allegheny River to the north shore, where attractions such as PNC Park are.

"Strong and sustained support from the community and elected officials is the key," Wohlwill said.

About 80 percent of the 1.2-mile rail line's cost will be paid for by the Federal Transit Administration, about 17 percent will be state money, and 3 percent local money. That is the sort of funding mix the South Shore would like to see for its extension.

The North Shore Connector has been controversial in Pittsburgh, because the Port Authority itself faces an operating budget crisis. But with a 10-year planning and build time line on such projects, the authority felt the time to move was now.

"It is so important to educate people about the project, so they always know what's going on and are aware of it and so once it's in place they will use it," Wohlwill said.