NWI mass transit a big federal stimulus funds winner

Federal transportation stimulus money in Northwest Indiana is doing everything from replacing a bridge over the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal to plugging a budget gap at Gary Public Transportation Corp.

Altogether, $56.5 million in stimulus money was allocated for transportation projects in Northwest Indiana through December, which is about 22 percent of all discretionary stimulus money being spent in the region, according to a Times computer-assisted analysis of data from the government's Recovery.gov Web site.

Mass transit came out the big region winner, reaping at least $21.6 million in funding for buses and trains from February of last year through Dec. 31.

"I think we could survive even without the stimulus program," said GPTC General Manager Daryl Lampkins. "But we would be a shell of an organization."

Among items funded by the Gary bus agency's stimulus windfall of $3.6 million will be $1.4 million in operating expenses. GPTC needs that money to plug an almost $2 million loss in annual tax collections due to state property tax caps.

Other bus agencies in Lake and Porter counties are picking up $2.4 million in stimulus money through the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission as they sort out how to make up for looming budget shortfalls.

Region mass transit came out a winner again two weeks ago, when the Federal Railroad Administration announced it was awarding $71.4 million in stimulus funds to speed trains through a freight and passenger rail junction in the town of Porter used by 14 Amtrak trains per day.

Called the Indiana Gateway, the project will involve building new rail sidings and high-speed crossovers. It will create 703 construction jobs, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation's application for the project. That makes it the single largest job-creating stimulus project in the region.

Some observers, including Purdue University Calumet Finance Professor Pat Obi, would like to have seen even more of the federal stimulus money put into transportation and, in particular, mass transit.

That's because improved infrastructure results in new wages going directly into the community and also helps achieve the longer-term goal of improving Northwest Indiana's beleaguered transportation system, Obi said.

"We can't improve public transportation enough in Indiana and Northwest Indiana," Obi said. "And $57 million altogether for transportation is really a trickle in the bucket."

INDOT also is using stimulus funds on more than 100 road projects throughout the region, with 71 of those being local street projects put forward by the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission. The local planning organization was allowed to select approximately $18 million in projects.

Most of the projects jointly selected by NIRPC and its 52 constituent communities are repaving projects, according to NIRPC planner Gary Evers, who spearheaded the selection process.

"They would not have repaved those streets at all in most instances," Evers said. "In many instances, the repaving they are doing with stimulus money is the only repaving they will do."

The local roads and highway spending in Northwest Indiana should create 543 construction jobs and 1,038 more jobs in the economy overall, according to a job-creation formula used by the Federal Highway Administration.

In addition to the NIRPC projects, INDOT undertook about $22 million in projects on state highways in the region. Those include the $2.2 million replacement of the Chicago Avenue bridge over the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal in East Chicago.

Some of those projects were put out for bid in January and February, raising the total amount already reported at Recovery.gov through the end of December.

Two weeks ago, INDOT announced it had bid out all $658 million of Indiana's road and bridge stimulus allocation for 1,082 projects. Using the Federal Highway Administration standard, that spending will create 6,777 jobs in the construction industry.

"This money was made available to us, so we wanted to maximize it as much as we could," said INDOT spokesman Will Wingfield.