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player ready...South Shore Line officials can’t prevent an ice storm from coating their power lines and equipment with ice, but they can respond better when something like that happens again, they said Friday.
“There are some things we absolutely are going to improve,” Michael Noland, the South Shore’s president and general manager, said in discussing the Jan. 12 incident that stranded South Shore riders on one train for more than three hours and disrupted all the morning rush-hour service that day.
Noland told the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District board that emergency procedures and communications will be improved, and the South Shore is considering some technologies that are used by other railroads.
“Everybody here feels that’s unacceptable,” NICTD board member Jim Biggs, a Porter County commissioner, said of the Jan. 12 incident, “and we need to fix that.”
Board member Michael Repay, a Lake County commissioner, said it would be good to have a written report, in addition to Friday’s verbal reports by Noland and other South Shore officers.
Mark Yagelski, NICTD board president, of LaPorte County, said some people didn’t feel they got a good explanation at the time.
Victor Babin, the South Shore’s chief engineering officer, said ice weighed down the pantographs — the apparatus that brings power to train cars from the electric line overhead — and cut off power to the train that got stuck on the tracks west of the Hegewisch station in the Hegewisch section of Chicago. He said Metra trains operating south of Chicago on Jan. 12 had less trouble with the ice, in part because they have heated pantographs.
Also, Metra trains run more frequently, which helps keep ice from building up on the power lines.
The South Shore is considering getting heated pantographs and pantograph-mounted ice-cutters.
Bill O’Dea, the South Shore’s chief operating officer, said the South Shore also plans to acquire another diesel locomotive and have it stationed near the western end of the line to help stranded trains.
Noland said NICTD’s text-messaging system proved to be inadequate Jan. 12, and the railroad will switch to another system to relay information to customers.
Also at the NICTD meeting:
*The NICTD board approved a $1.1 billion five-year capital plan for major South Shore improvements, including $604 million for the West Lake extension from Hammond to Dyer; $290 million for installing a second set of tracks between Gary and Michigan City; $75 million for positive train control, an automated emergency braking system mandated by federal law; $30 million for new train cars; $20 million to move the South Shore tracks to the western end of the South Bend Airport terminal, to reduce travel time; and $93.6 million for “state of good repair” projects to maintain and upgrade the service. Federal funds would pay for more than half or more of all the projects except for positive train control.
*The number of South Shore riders last year fell by about 3.1 percent, but ticket revenue was up about 3.4 percent. John Parsons, the South Shore’s marketing and planning director, said lower gasoline prices have prompted some passengers to switch to cars, and Chicago’s special events are attracting fewer people. Track-improvement projects caused train delays in the first half of last year, but in the past six months, Parsons said, the trains were on time nearly 94 percent of the time.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.