In about two years, South Shore trains are expected to be operating with positive train control, a way to stop a train exceeding a safe speed or ignoring a signal, such as caused a nearly head-on collision in Gary more than 20 years ago or the more recent Hoboken, N.J., fatal crash into a station.
The worst accident in the South Shore Line's recent history happened on a January morning in 1993 at a narrow bridge on Gary's west side. Seven people, including a 10-year-old boy, were killed, and 155 were injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates major transportation crashes, blamed both trains' motormen. By the time its report came out in December 1993, both had been fired by the railroad.
The NTSB also called for installing an automatic braking system on the train cars to prevent similar crashes.
Other crashes have prompted calls for such braking, including the Sept. 29 accident in which a commuter train plowed onto a New Jersey station platform, killing one person and injuring 114, and the May 12, 2015 incident when an Amtrak train entered a curve in Philadelphia about 50 mph over the speed limit, derailing the train and killing eight passengers, injuring 200
Railroads have been trying out positive train control systems off and on since the early 1990s, but the movement got a decisive push after a head-on crash between a commuter train and a freight train in Los Angeles killed 25 people in September 2008. The commuter train's engineer had failed to stop at a red light and wound up on the same track as the freight.
Congress passed a law mandating positive train control on passenger railroads and on freight railroads carrying hazardous materials by December 2015. Lawmakers did not include funding to carry out the mandate.
Most railroads, including the South Shore and Chicago-area's Metra, couldn't meet that deadline, which was pushed back to Dec. 31, 2018. The Federal Railroad Administration has said that target won't be pushed back again.
"Our intention is to meet that deadline," South Shore President Michael Noland said recently.
The South Shore has borrowed $100 million for the positive train control system and will be paying that off for 20 years, he said. About $80 million of that bond issue is for a contract with Parsons Transportation Group, which also will be installing PTC on Metra trains.
The South Shore is building an addition to a maintenance building in Michigan City which is expected to be completed in about six weeks, at which time the South Shore will begin installing positive train control systems on two rail cars at a time, Noland said.
After the control system is installed on all of the South Shore's 72 powered cars, it will undergo tests to make sure it's operating properly.
Positive train control includes a global positioning satellite system that pinpoints where the car is at any time and wayside signals along the tracks to send additional information.
Noland expects to hire about 10 employees just for implementing and operating the system, which he figures will add $1 million to the South Shore's operating costs.
Positive train control could have prevented the 1993 crash, Noland said, since the NTSB report said one train's engineer ignored a signal to stop.
The NTSB has said PTC also could have prevented a Jan. 6, 2012, collision involving three freight trains on CSX tracks in Porter County's Jackson Township.
But, Noland said, it wouldn't have prevented the June 18, 1998, crash in Portage that killed three South Shore passengers. In that incident, a truck had stopped for a passing freight train on a track adjoining the South Shore's. The truck's trailer, carrying steel coils, hung over the South Shore tracks, and the train's motorman didn't have time to stop.
As a result of that crash, and numerous other near-collisions at the same crossing, a $10 million bridge was built over the tracks and U.S. 12.
Accidents at railroad crossings are far more frequent than the type of crash that positive train control can prevent, Noland said.
"If a truck pulls out onto a crossing at the last minute – that (positive train control) is not going to stop that kind of accident," he said. "The engineer is still going to have to be vigilant."
"I tell people," Noland said, "that if I was in charge of the world, I'd eliminate all railroad grade crossings (by building overpasses and underpasses). But that's not going to happen."