Over 90 days, 283 undocumented immigrants driving trucks were stopped in Northwest Indiana, Tony Ferraro told the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission executive board Thursday.
“That’s over three a day that we pulled out of trucks,” said Ferraro, an aide to Gov. Mike Braun and a member of NIRPC.
Many of them had commercial driver’s licenses issued in states like California and New York that don’t require CDL drivers to be citizens, he said.
“The bottom line is it was illegal. It was against the law,” Ferraro said. “We prosecuted and took over the enforcement action.”
“I think all of us have had a close call with the trucks,” Chesterton Town Council member Jim Ton said.
The stops were at weigh stations, where truck drivers are instructed to pull off the interstate to have their trucks weighed, Ferraro said.
Braun is committed to traffic safety, he said. “We’ve probably seen more speed traps out on the expressways and U.S. 30, and that’s probably more than my 14 years of living here.”
That helps not only with reducing speeding but also interdiction efforts, Ferraro said.
NIRPC Executive Director Ty Warner said when he began his job 13 years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice opened his eyes to how many things are being moved through this region.
Indiana Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner Matt Deitchley said state police are enforcing speed limits in work zones. “We want the officers to be in a safe position, but we also want them to be effective,” he said, so there has been a lot of conversation about where to position the officers.
Also enforcing speed limits in work zones are four safety cameras statewide, one of which is likely to be used in Northwest Indiana this summer, Deitchley said.
The Indiana General Assembly created a pilot program to use only four cameras under strict conditions.
“We’re hoping the pilot program continues,” Deitchley said. “It is dramatically slowing down traffic.”
In addition to focusing on safety on area expressways, INDOT is installing fiber optic for the Borman Expressway Flex Road project, which is aimed at adding capacity to the Borman without adding new lanes. Future work will include ramp metering – using stoplights on ramps to control the flow of traffic onto the expressway – and the ability to allow shoulders to become through lanes to make traffic flow faster when breakdowns or accidents occur.
The fiber optic cables will allow signage to provide better information to drivers, including when that extra lane can be used.
The NIRPC executive board also updated the transportation improvement plan.
New projects include two bridge replacements in Porter County and one in LaPorte County, as well as the purchase of trail counters for various communities.
The Porter County bridges include one on County Road 50 East over Pleasant Township Ditch, north of County Road 1050 South, and another on County Road 600 South over Jones Ditch, just east of Smoke Road.
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Cedar Lake chose to drop out of federal funding for a sign modernization project, figuring the costs of complying with federal rules are so expensive that it’s cheaper for the town to fund the project without the federal aid.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.