Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our show, where each week we take a deep dove into the regional economy and the people, the companies and the communities and projects that are helping our region grow.

On a typical day, they run 40 trains carrying some twelve thousand passengers in and out of Chicago, in northern Indiana.

They have big plans to improve that service and reduce travel time.

We'll take a closer look at the South Shore Railroad and what improvement you can expect in the coming years.

Coming up on Economic Outlook.

For years, the South Shore Railroad has been an important connector for northern Indiana residents into one of the biggest economies in the world.

Chicago business and leisure travelers have found it a convenient connection, but at the same time have longed for shorter trips.

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the South Shore Line, has big plans to do just that.

Joining me today for a conversation are Mike Noland, president and general manager of the south shore line, and Andy Kostielney, the St. Joseph County commissioner and a board member at NICTD.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today.

Thanks for having us, Jeff.

Just a quick note before we get into our discussion here at WNIT.

We're respecting social distancing and as such have both our hosts and our guests joining us virtually.

So, guys, I really appreciate the conversation.

Thank you.

This technology to give us the chance to connect in much different ways.

And I'm really grateful for you to be here.

So so obviously, this area has got a lot of attention in recent years with the things that are going on.

And so we're going to have that conversation about rail today.

Mike, I want to go back to you.

So you run the South Shore.

You're part of the northern Indiana commuter transportation district and President south shore line.

Tell us a little bit about how you first became involved with this south shore railroad.

Well, my first involvement was probably the same date myself.

Now I'm going back to 1978 when I was a freshman at Notre Dame and used to take the old South Shore Line cars back and forth between school and home here in the Chicago suburbs.

So I remember the old orange cars, the shake, rattle and roll that we had prior to the new stainless steel cars that we acquired in 1982.

So my my memories of the South Shore go back to the days when you had Flagstaff's out in the middle of a field with a with the person waving a flashlight.

We'd stop at a farm field somewhere east of Michigan City on our way back to campus.

Lot's changed since then.

Mike how many years has the South Shore been serving?

Northern Indiana?

We did our birthday to 1908.

So we're on our one hundred and thirteen thousand one hundred fourteenth year or so right now.

And going strong.

Great.

Sounds good.

And we'll get into talking about some experience.

Commissioner Kostielney will come your way too.

And how about you.

What what's your first memory, your experience dealing with the south shore?

It was a great and a sad both rolled into one.

I was a young man and we rode into Chicago to go to a cub game.

And unfortunately, the Cubs did what they did back then.

They weren't very successful.

But I always associated the South Shore with with the Chicago Cubs because that's how we would to go to games.

It was obviously been an important connection for many years, not only from a business traveler standpoint, but a leisure traveler.

And I know many me including commissioner, have love that easy access to Chicago and the transportation network that's there.

And I want to talk a little bit about that today.

So, Mike, I want to go back just a little bit and think about or maybe just talk passenger rail in general.

So I feel like passenger rail is getting a lot of attention around the country, their communities everywhere that want to to have access to a passenger rail.

Can you just talk to us a little bit about what's happening in the passenger rail space from a popularity standpoint, from an investment standpoint?

Just give us a picture of the landscape there.

Sure.

I think now I count 30 or so commuter rail agencies around the country that's grown significantly over the past 20, 25 years.

Legacy systems like the system in Chicago or New York or Philadelphia or our system certainly existed.

But there's been a big trend to to bring commuter rail agencies or areas around the country that didn't have it.

And so that's what really led to the creation of the federal funding program that we have been successful in receiving.

Called the Capital Investment Grant Program back in the late 80s and 90s is where it started.

And if you had a big project where you wanted to either start a rail system or you wanted to invest heavily in a rail system, Congress put together a program where you could try to get federal matching funds to to allow you to invest in rail.

But it continues to be a very popular program around the country.

We're very successful, but I know we'll talk about that.

But it's very competitive to go after those funds big.

There are many, many areas around the country that want what we already have here today.

Andy, let me come your way, because you've been involved for a number of years on the board, involved with other key stakeholders up and up and down the corridor, just talk about sort of your experience or even the evolution of what you've seen from your early days of involvement to where where you're at today.

I think one of the most crucial things about the NICTD board is it's the political balance.

I mean, it is an apolitical organization.

So back when it was the old mechanism of a commissioner and a council member from each of the four corridor counties or to its current configuration, where the governor appoints one elected official from each of the four counties, you know, politics have stayed out of this.

But what's best for our communities, both as a region and specifically, have been the most important thing and glad to see that continue.

Great.

So, Mike, when you were brought in to to lead the railroad there, you had a pretty long list to do list, I guess I would say a number of capital improvements and things that needed it and want to talk about it.

But I want to go back first to one other, just sort of framing things, help remind our how many trains do you run a day?

How many people do you employ?

How many passengers are typically there?

And let's talk maybe sort of pre pandemic, because I think pandemic obviously saves lives and then maybe even a snapshot on how it's going.

Since the pandemic started.

OK, if I miss any of those questions, just rattle off about six.

Hold off on the capital side and more.

Just remind us real quick of the number of trains, the number of people that kind of stuff.

We run thirty nine trains a day in and out of Chicago.

Now, some of those trains start in South Bend.

We have five trains that run directly to Chicago and five that come back.

We have we have a number of trains that operate out of Michigan City.

It's probably closer to thirty, thirty one or thirty two.

And then we have some trains that will turn at they'll go to Chicago, then they'll come back to Gary and they don't go any farther east and then they go back to Chicago.

So overall, in and out of the city, there's thirty nine trains a day and there's just various trains at different stations along the way.

Pre pandemic, we were running between eleven thousand five hundred and twelve thousand trips a day.

Revenue was around three and a half are ridership was around three and a half million rides a year.

Twenty three or four million dollars in fare revenue on a budget of around fifty million, three hundred and fifty employees, of which most of those employees are front line employees.

Whether there are conductors or engineers or maintaining our our equipment and electricians, machinists line and signal people out on the rail track laborers actually doing the physical work to keep the railroad running.

Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Great, thank you.

And I apologize because the more you talk, the more questions pop into my head.

And so let me ask one other, because I'm intrigued by the electric component of that.

Is that unique, rare or there are other ones like this?

Help me understand that piece.

Sure.

We do run a unique style of electric railroad that that really only the South shore and Metro run.

Its the power distribution system.

Fifteen hundred overhead DC power.

There are other systems around the country, though that are electric out in Philadelphia, SEPTA, New York, MTA, the New Jersey Transit along the Northeast Corridor along Amtrak run electric service.

California is electrifying a portion of their system now.

So there are a number of providers around the country that run on overhead electric wire service category service.

Ours is a little unique in the way our power structure works.

Great things like anyone to come back your way for a second.

And as I started to tease that, that when Mike was came in, there was a pretty long to do list of capital improvements and such.

You mentioned sort of the bipartisan nature, the priority to just speak to the the thought process by the board in terms of developing that list.

And then I'll go back to Mike for some discussion about some specifics there.

I mean, we have seen this as a resource to the northwest corner of the state.

So we're going to find a way, how do we maximize this investment?

How do we maximize this resource?

So one of the things that was limiting, at least from a South Bend from the St. Joe County standpoint, was the time in which it took to get from point A to point B, and we've seen this across other areas of the train as well.

So one of the things we want to really focus on, how do we make the ride better, smoother?

We've done things like add bike cars and bike racks and Wi-Fi to to increase the customer experience.

But we really need to focus on getting the time down to a more manageable level.

So Mike time is is really on top of people's minds, they're trying to get in and out of the city very quickly.

Andy mentioned the priority of sort of making improvements.

Let's start talking about maybe some of the specific improvements either underway or going into maybe let's address first the major time project, if you will, to get trains to and from communities, the double track project.

So help us understand people who don't know what that is.

A little bit more about that.

Sure.

And this has been on the drawing board, I think, since Samuel Insull on the railroad one hundred years ago, the vision to extend double tracking for the rail, for the rail line from Michigan, I'm sorry, from Gary, Indiana, to the Chicago rail system that we jump on in Illinois, on Metra, we're double tracked and we can we can move back and forth seamlessly between one track and another.

And we get the metric quadruple track when we run east of Michigan, or Gary, towards Michigan City, it's mostly a single track railroad.

So think of one way traffic got a two way street or construction projects where you have that that flag on one hand holding the stop sign while the traffic comes from the other end.

And then when that clears the turn, the sign around and traffic in the other direction.

That's the that twenty five mile area between Michigan City and Gary is mostly a one way street, and it limits our ability to run express type service.

And it also causes train delays.

If anything happens in that twenty five mile section, we have no way to avoid it or go around it.

So we are double tracking a twenty five mile section between Gary and Michigan City.

We're putting what are called high speed crossover or passing lanes so a train can go from one track to another and effectively run express service to Chicago where we're improving.

The throughput through Michigan City was straightening out some curves.

And so between all of those elements, we're going to be able to cut down travel time significantly.

And every one of the investments that we make are all west of South Bend.

So all that saving that occurs, a nurse to the benefit of our riders out from the South Bend region.

So as an example, if you jump on the train in the dunes, you get some of that time savings, but not all that everybody that's east of where the improvements are made and enjoy one hundred percent of the time saving elements that we're investing as part of the double track project.

So Andy let me come back your way and to get a St. Joe County perspective on that, obviously the local community has believed in it and like many other partners, has made some significant investment.

Talk about that.

What you see in terms of the benefits this county and this project that Mike talked about, the double track.

I think the benefits are huge.

I mean, the first is that the state, your county, along with the other three counties in the region, we each kicking around 18 and a half million dollars for this project.

But what a leveraging of funds that we have here locally.

We paid under 20 million dollars for three hundred and fifty or so million dollar project.

And the thing is, we get almost all the benefit, as Mike said.

I mean, Michigan City, the Laporte County probably gets is the biggest beneficiary.

But we get I mean, we're going to save 20 to 30 minutes per trip.

So, I mean, it's very easy for me to defend why we're investing this money, because we get the majority of the benefit.

And the fact that we had other counties kick in money just shows the importance of the overall South Shore health and well-being.

So, Mike, you had the task of pulling together a coalition to to make this happen, so talk a little bit about some of the key strategic partners that had helped advance the track to where it is today.

Yeah, that's a great topic, Jeff, because, you know, in addition to the double track project, we also in the last 90 days got a full funding grant agreement for the West Lake Project.

So I get that question from other commuter CEOs around the country and say basically, what was your secret sauce?

Right.

And so really, the answer is, as Andy pointed out, not only do we have bipartisan support on our board, but put our projects have enjoyed incredible bipartisan support at the local county, state and federal level.

And we leveraged that.

And that was clear to the federal transportation and administration personnel who came out.

Secretary Elaine Chao came out, she saw firsthand and commented about what an incredible grassroots level all the way up to the highest levels of our elected officials in the state of Indiana, all behind this project.

We had not only elected officials, we had officials from the Chambers of Commerce, as you know, from business organizations such as Northwest Indiana Forum.

We had other we had the realtors, we had the home builders.

We had Renkin, our passengers.

We had such a coalition of support saying, yeah, let's get this done and we're behind it.

When you have when you build that and then you have project champions.

So on the Westlake project, we had Congressman Pete Visclosky and he worked with his Republican counterparts to get that funding on the double track project.

I would say our our our main proponent was Governor Holcomb, and he led the charge from the state of Indiana and on a bipartisan basis, work to coalesce that support to help push this project across the line.

Not only was a good project from a economic standpoint, from a ridership standpoint, but from a bipartisan standpoint, it has all the ingredients that you need, you need.

And we had our project champions to help push it across the finish line.

Let me jump in quick.

I mean, I think the key to all this was the support of Governor Holcomb, because he when we realize there's going to be some funding gaps, the state stepped up right away.

We didn't even have to ask.

They just stepped up.

Right.

Governor Holcomb reconstituted the board, gave it more leadership.

But Joe McGinnis is a chairman.

So I think it's just been huge the the commitment that the state of Indiana has made to the south shore.

Great.

Appreciate it, Mike.

I want to stay on the west.

I'm going to stay on the track.

But I want to shift the Westlake for just a quick second.

So if some of our viewers are unfamiliar with the Westlake Connector and what that is, can you give us a quick description of what that project is?

Sure.

30 some years ago, the CSX was abandoning a rail line that ran the old Monan corridor in Hammond, in Munster and South Shore, along with Munster and Hammond thought that that line, that eight six miles of railroad add to to have an opportunity someday to build a commuter rail line.

And we've been working towards that end since 1990 and really got momentum starting in 2014.

Congressman Visclosky has been the champion on that project.

It's a eight mile line extension from North Hammond down to the Munster Dyr border.

There'll be four stations, one at Munster Dyr border, one and one hundred Ridge Road in Munster at one hundred seventy third in Hammond.

And then what we call our Gateway Station in Hammond, where the South Shore Line and the Westlake line meet up in North Hammond so passengers can move back and forth between either line.

They can somebody can jump on a train and Munster transfer Hammond and go to South Bend or starting south bend, go to Hammond and go down to Munster or wherever they want to go.

So that's an eight hundred thousand nine hundred thirty three dollars million project, including financing double tracks, a four hundred ninety dollars million project, including [inaudible] so between those two projects, we're talking about one almost one point five billion dollars in projects coming in here that are being invested into northwest Indiana.

Terrific to hear that.

And thank you for your good work on that.

I'm continuing my conversation with Mike Noland, the president of the South Shore Railroad, and Andy Kostielney from the board there and also commissioner here in St. joseph county, Mike, in our last five minutes, I just want to touch a little bit more on on on double track.

And so help us understand just timing.

It's a project we're all excited about, it obviously takes a long time to put the the financial needs in place to make it happen, but help us understand the projected timeframe for those improvements.

Sure.

First of all, I'd say we've been talking about what would happen if this project gets funded.

We're beyond that.

It's now coming soon.

We're going to be hanging out pardon our dust signs here, because we're going to start turning dirt this summer.

And our schedule envisions about a two year construction project.

We hope to be running revenue service in the fall of 2023.

And that's when we enjoyed the improvements that the project envisions.

Our forty five service from South Bend a little over an hour, about sixty seven minutes from Michigan City.

Fifty two minutes from Chesterton.

Forty two minutes from Gary Miller Station.

14 more trains a day are coming, so they'll be not every station is getting fourteen but.

But a total of 14 more stations are trains per day.

Significant improvements are coming along the line.

And coupled with those improvements, we're already seeing huge interest from the private sector and development activity.

And that's occurring at stations up and down the line.

Great.

Pretty exciting to see.

And that time will fly and be here before we know it.

We're really anxious to see that happen,Commissioner I'm going to come back your way because we're just like other improvements.

There's been a lot of talk about our end of the line in the south bend end of it and that.

Are there ways that we can continue to enhance speed and help pick that up?

Any updates on what's going on in that state?

So we're still trying to find a way to cut that final 10 to 15 minutes.

It's kind of like a lazy canoe ride down.

Once we get to City South Bend, it just we have slowed down considerably and it's ten to fifteen minutes to the trip.

We're trying to find ways that we could move move the station to the west side of the airport and then figure out how to how we can cut that time further when we like the airport, because it's kind of already a transportation hub to begin with.

It's easy to get to.

Access is very easy, both by by rail, by plane, by by road.

So we're still working on that.

We don't have any firm updates yet, but those conversations are still taking place.

And we're kind of we're waiting on a couple of reports to come back and quite frankly, from the FAA to see if they'll allow us to kind of kind of intermingle into their airspace.

Mike, in our last three minutes, come back your way just because these are rather enhancements, so so obviously these are pretty big ticket items that some of these projects.

But you mentioned overall the like the passenger experience and time and what so other things that might be on the horizon in the coming years that would that our viewers need to know about why they might pick the software instead of driving into Chicago.

Sure.

We're very close to signing a lease with Metra to acquire twenty six additional double decker cars.

So that will bring double decker cars to our fleet to around 40.

We're excited about that.

We're investing in high level boarding at additional stations like Michigan City at our dunes and Miller.

That's going to enhance the bike service opportunity.

So someone who wants to ride a bike and jump on it, South bend and take our train to to Michigan City if they want to jump off and ride the lake or to do it at Miller or Ogden Dunes and take the great bike trails if they want to do that.

We're also investing in other areas along the line that are going to continue to reduce travel time.

And that's our focus is to continue look where to look at ways to reduce the travel time and improve the trip for our passengers going to and from Chicago.

I will add one commercial here.

Jeff covid-19 has certainly impacted all of us in many, many ways.

Our ridership right now is significantly down because of it.

But we've taken the time during this last year to really invest in additional technology and practices.

We're safer than we've ever been before from a sanitization standpoint.

We've got electrostatic sprayers, we do fobbing.

We've got ultraviolet equipment on the trains.

We've hired more cleaners.

We're safer when our riders are ready to come back and emerge back into a society that's post COVID that we're going to be ready for them.

Commissioner, last 30 seconds, a final word for anybody thinking about using the South Shore.

Well, I think it's a great use of time because as we know, time is one of the most valuable commodities we have.

And if you're driving, you're not working.

I mean, it's easier to to take advantage of that.

Anything we can do to further access the third largest economic market in our country, we at South Bend and St. Joe County simply need to do.

There's so many economic benefits to this.

It just it just makes sense.

1015 00:24:59,100 --> 00:25:00,199 He's Mike Noland from the South Shore Railroad is Commissioner Kostielney from the board there and the commissioner here in S. Joseph County.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining me today.

Really appreciate you being here and giving us the update.

Congratulations on your great success on the project.

And we'll look forward to the dust.

This as the construction gets happening and in particular, enjoying the trip as that work gets done.

Thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Jeff.

That's it show today.

Thank you for watching.

WNIT or listening to our podcast to watch this episode again or any of our past episodes.

You can find Economic Outlook at WNIT.Org or find our podcast and most major podcast platforms for somebody like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter Jeff Rea.

I'll see you next week.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.