A highly respected transportation study recently revealed traffic congestion in Northwest Indiana had surged 45 percent, with the cost of congestion soaring to $500 million from $300 million just two years before.
That study jumbles forecasts for progress in transportation in Northwest Indiana, but the fate of our commute to work and transporting goods through the Region remains in our hands, according to Tyson Warner, executive director at the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.
"There are different choices we have; we are not total slaves to this," Warner said. "We have options. We just have to act on them."
In making those choices, the goal is not just to cut the time and cost of being stuck in traffic, but also to leverage all that transportation activity for economic development locally, Warner said.
There may be no single set of projects that will both reduce congestion and promote economic development more than those contemplated for the South Shore commuter railroad by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, according to proponents.
One is a project to add a second set of tracks where the mainline currently lacks them, which could cut travel times dramatically to Chicago from places such as South Bend, Michigan City and Gary. The second project is to build the first branch of the South Shore line, which would run through Hammond to Munster and Dyer.
All of that will open up the potential for commercial, retail and housing development around stations, said NICTD General Manager Michael Noland.
"Once we get funding for a project, you see the developers," Noland said. "Once they know a project is real, they will start scooping up properties."
Outside observers see Northwest Indiana as having arrived at a crossroads in its history, as its reliance on steel and heavy industry fades and it begins to take advantage of its position next to Chicago, the eighth-largest economy in the world.
"The big question is will Northwest Indiana finally leverage it's strategic location at the end of Lake Michigan to attract transit-oriented development and just development in general," said Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor and director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development.
The Region has a good start. The South Shore plans, the recently completed $174 million airport expansion at Gary, and even the Borman expansion of a decade ago position the Region to leverage its gateway position, Schwieterman said.
"Northwest Indiana is overdue for a bigger piece of the development action, given the better economy in Indiana and stability in state government," Schwieterman said.
Some major transportation projects in Northwest Indiana remain in limbo, with no one able to forecast their eventual path to completion.
Topping that list is the Illiana Expressway, a road touted as the solution to gridlock on the Borman Expressway and attacked as a boondoggle by opponents. But Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's coolness toward the project and a major defeat for the road in federal court in June mean it could be years before planning is restarted.
The road would have been an east-west corridor linking Interstate 65 near Lowell with Interstate 55 near Wilmington, in Illinois.
NIRPC is now looking at ways to improve traffic flows on U.S. 30, perhaps by reducing access points, Warner said. That could resolve some of the problems with east-west traffic flows the Illiana Expressway was intended to address.
Schwieterman said the Illiana Expressway could be reborn in some form in the future, perhaps adhering more to the original Chicago area ring road concept, rather than just a straightline connector between two interstates.
Forecasts of when or if a new Cline Avenue bridge might be built over the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal received a small jolt late last year when the East Chicago Plan Commission approved the site plan and building design for a bridge maintenance facility and operations center.
However, it is still unknown if the private owners of the bridge right-of-way have raised the $150 million to $250 million it will take to build a new one.
INDOT closed the 26-year-old Cline Avenue Bridge on Nov. 13, 2009, and condemned it a month later after inspectors determined it was gravely weakened. It was demolished in 2013.
The key to avoiding gridlock in the Region does not hinge on any single project, according to Warner. Instead, the future will be determined in large part by how we deal collectively with all the major interstate transportation routes that pass through the Region. Those include four interstate expressway routes, three Class I railroads, and multiple underground fuel pipelines.
The vision and the practical steps for dealing with all that is contained in NIRPC's award-winning 2040 Comprehensive Regional Plan, Warner said. It lays out solutions for the Region in transportation, environment and the economy.
The congestion study recently put out by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute showed the average driver suffering about 80 hours of traffic delay per year. That means motorists here spend about two workweeks per year stuck in traffic now.
And with truck freight tonnage on highways forecast to surge 21 percent from 2010 to 2020, it's more important than ever to implement the congestion-relief measures of the 2040 plan, Warner said.
On local roads, motorists will see more use of intelligent transportation systems, such as electronic signs that can warn of trouble ahead, point out better routes to use, and even give car vs. train commute times, Warner said.
With the South Shore expansion and double-tracking projects there will be more residential, retail and business development around train stations. And NIRPC already has plans in motion to close the significant gaps in the Region's north-south highway system.
There is one significant change coming down the road whose effects can't be forecast, but it's coming, Warner said.
"I'm constantly amazed by how much attention the topic of autonomous vehicles is getting," Warner said. "It's not science fiction anymore."
Crash avoidance technology, already available on many cars, may get to the point where automobiles could follow one another much more closely on major interstates. That would effectively increase the capacity of those roads without adding any lanes.
"I don't even ask for these features," Warner said. "But I'm already getting lane avoidance technology, self-parking and all this. It's already here."