Michael Noland, the South Shore Line’s president, agrees with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg that a downtown South Shore station could be good for the city’s economy in the long run.
But a new station at South Bend International Airport is a more attainable short-term goal, Noland said.
Buttigieg proposed a downtown station at Monday’s South Bend Common Council meeting.
“The difficulty is money,” Noland said of the downtown location, which Buttigieg acknowledged could cost several times more to develop than the airport station.
The South Shore line now ends at the eastern end of the airport. The railroad has said that moving the station to the airport’s west side would cut the running time between South Bend and Chicago and eliminate a number of street crossings in South Bend.
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“We like being at the airport for a lot of reasons,” Noland said.
The airport provides easy access for people coming from U.S. 31 or the Indiana Toll Road, he said, and it’s also served by South Bend buses.
“People feel comfortable going there,” he said.
In the future, he added, a light-rail connection could be developed between the airport and downtown South Bend.
South Bend’s redevelopment commission has said it would spend $25 million to build a new station in the city. Buttigieg said Monday that developing a downtown station could cost around $100 million and possibly more.
The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which runs the South Shore, is seeking around $1 billion in federal grants to build the West Lake Corridor from Hammond to Dyer and to lay a second set of tracks between Gary and Michigan City, but it does not plan now to seek a major grant for the South Bend area.
South Bend officials have said they’ll work on funding solutions for a South Shore station site.
“We’ll work with the city,” Noland said. “They know that these kinds of investments are 100-year investments.”
The South Shore’s goal in South Bend is to reduce the running time between there and downtown Chicago to 90 minutes, which Noland says will triple the ridership to South Bend.
South Bend riders now account for about 5 percent of the South Shore’s weekday passengers but about 20 percent of the weekend ridership, he said.
The South Shore Line originally went along city streets into downtown South Bend, but that station closed in 1970 and the railroad sold the land.
The South Shore was “sort of asked to leave” at the time, Noland said, because maintenance on the South Shore – owned then by the Chesapeake & Ohio, a major freight railroad – had declined, and once a runaway train raced through downtown South Bend.
The station first was moved in 1970 to South Bend’s west side. In 1992, it was shifted to the airport
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.