On his second day on the job, Mike Noland was at a public meeting in Munster, working on extending South Shore Line service from Hammond to Dyer.
“My second day on the job was the first day of the environmental process for West Lake Corridor,” the recently retired Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District president and general manager recalled.
It was Oct. 28, 2014, at Munster’s Center for Visual and Performing Arts. Posterboards all around the room explained potential routes.
It’s a process likely to be repeated as the RDA’s new 20-year strategic plan includes further expanding the commuter rail line, possibly to Crown Point, Merrillville and Valparaiso, among other stops.
Even in his retirement, Noland is still working on final details to finish out the Monon Corridor project that began full service April 1, his successor, David Dech, said Monday.
Noland knows a lot about commuter rail service in the Chicago area, having previously worked for Metra Electric.
“When I started at Metra, it was 1983, and it was really at the very beginning of what everyone knows as Metra,” Noland said. Freight railroads wanted to get out of passenger railroad business. Legacy commuter systems were losing money.
The Chicago Rock Island and Pacific went into bankruptcy in 1976 and was liquidated in 1980, he said.
“Sounds familiar, right? A fiscal cliff?” The formation of Metra, where Noland began his railroad career, is similar to the creation of NICTD, which oversees South Shore Line passenger service. A government agency was created to serve commuters when the private sector railroads were ready to jettison passenger service.
The fiscal cliff back then has echoes today.
This spring, the Illinois Legislature faced new calls for a cash infusion for public transit in the Chicago area. The Indiana General Assembly similarly worked a deal with NICTD last year to provide additional funding for South Shore Line service, with NICTD promising to raise fares every other year to keep up with rising costs after the pandemic depleted cash reserves.
Noland started his career in what was then the personnel department, now known as human relations. He soon attended law school at night and finished up in 1989. “I must have been doing something right,” Noland said, because he was made chief HR officer at age 30 in 1990. Five years later, he was named general counsel.
Toward the end of Noland’s Metra career, troubled Metra CEO Phil Pagano jumped in front of a train and killed himself.
Noland was Pagano’s No. 2 before the board made management changes.
He landed at a private sector railroad called Iowa Pacific, a short line. “It gave me great experience to be at a short line,” Noland said, which served him well when he became NICTD’s leader.
At Metra, there were 3,000 employees, 600 of them in management.
At the short line, people do all kinds of things. The owner even punches tickets for riders.
“Anything somebody called you to do was your job.”
“Here at the South Shore Line, we operate very much like a short line,” Noland said.
Kelly Wenger, NICTD’s director of strategic planning, handles grant development, minority-owned businesses and Title 6 compliance. At a large railroad, there would probably be 70 people handling the functions she does, Noland said. “You do more with less, and you manage to get things done.”
Noland was vice president of HR for Iowa Pacific’s European division. It operated U.S. railroads as well.
Gerald Hanas, Noland’s predecessor, referred him to an executive recruiter in summer 2014.
Hanas was the board’s security blanket, NICTD’s president for 37 years, since it started. He was kept on as a consultant to help Noland understand the railroad’s institutional history, the thought process behind previous decisions and planned activity.
Before agreeing to be NICTD’s second president, Noland examined the recently completed 20-year service plan. “Why is this a 20-year plan? Let’s go!” he said.
Hanas worked closely with Noland early on. “Our phone calls were daily in the beginning and then dropped off.”
Now it’s Noland in that role, with Dech “drinking through a fire hose because everything’s brand new,” Noland said. He expects their phone calls to drop off during the summer and by September dwindle to a few a month.
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One of Noland’s first actions at NICTD was to hire a Metra retiree, former Chief Operating Officer George Hardwich, to look at the South Shore Line’s operation from an opportunity standpoint, offering an outsider’s perspective.
“I had George ride trains from two to three days from the head end, talking to crews and passengers,” Noland said. Hardwich offered a three-page, single-spaced list of opportunities and challenges.
“George didn’t really have much of a filter,” Noland said. “I knew I would have an honest broker.”
“Everybody wants the railroad to be on time. On-time performance is a key metric,” along with rider satisfaction, Noland said.
Sometimes, in the desire to be on time, the railroad added more time to allow trains to be on schedule rather than fix the problem that caused the delay.
“No one can remember, because these things happen over time, exactly why we added time to the schedule,” Noland said.
Hardwich discussed opportunities to eliminate speed restrictions along the route.
Places where trains were going 15 mph, increasing it to 30 mph would reduce travel time by a few minutes. “You get 100% improvement on schedule time if you go from 15 mph to 30,” Noland said.
“We’re a railroad that runs at max track speed of 79 mph,” but there are curves and other restrictions. “What would it take to improve that?”
Hardwich’s suggestions were taken to heart.
In East Chicago, freight trains were moved 18 inches away from the platform in case something protruded from the freight train. That protected passengers and the platform, allowing the passenger trains to run faster. Hegewisch saw a similar shift.
That was even before major infrastructure improvements came along.
“The Double Track NWI project was definitely an inconvenience for our passengers, and we thanked them for putting up with our ‘pardon our dust’ approach,” Noland said. The major investment in putting a second set of tracks between Gary and Michigan City meant trains could go both directions, or even pass another train going the same direction, thus reducing travel times previously caused by waiting on a siding.
The Monon Corridor project offered an opportunity to straighten out a reverse S curve in Hammond by moving what is now the Hammond Gateway Station about three blocks. Hardwich had recommended doing so.
“I said, ‘But George, we would have to take out all these houses.’ He just shrugged his shoulders and said you didn’t tell me I had restrictions,” Noland said.
It turned out that Hammond wanted the train station to move three blocks west anyway, with Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. and the City Council supporting the removal of 60 homes.
The Double Track NWI and Monon Corridor projects meant acquiring 200 homes. “I’m not going to say all the residents were super happy,” but no one filed a lawsuit, Noland said.
But there were other steps to take, too, including ones that involved coordinating with Metra. The first 14.5 miles take South Shore trains on Metra tracks, so improving the system benefits Metra passengers as well as South Shore riders.
“I knew there were opportunities to invest in the Metra Electric system to make it better,” Noland said, so he offered a high-level study to evaluate what to do to make improvements happen, with the two rail lines splitting the cost.
Metra CEO Jim Derwinski noted three bridges that NICTD and Metra went under, where trains were slowed to 50 mph instead of the 65 mph speed limit. That cost two minutes of schedule time every time a train traveled under the bridges.
In meetings with Metra, Noland said, nobody could remember why the trains needed to slow down.
Derwinski said the type of pantographs used on trains had changed, so he suggested some tests, running trains at 65 mph with GoPro cameras attached. There were no issues. That was an easy way to shave two minutes off the schedule.
Right away, Noland said, “We improved the ride and the quality of service by just looking at the issues.”
The study also included the $200 million to add a fourth track, “right at the heart of the terminal,” where Metra went from four tracks to three. With the South Shore adding 26 extra trains daily, this was needed. Were it not for the Double Track NWI and Monon Corridor projects, that would have been the most expensive project in NICTD’s history.
Adding bidirectional signals means it’s no longer two northbound tracks and two southbound. “Think of it as the reversible lanes on the Kennedy. They’ve got the extra lanes they can open up,” Noland said.
“I think there’s another 5 to 10 minutes of schedule savings, at least,” on the Metra system, Noland said. “In our industry, you might get 30 seconds here or there, and then you put it all together.”
NICTD plans to shift its South Bend station from the east side of the airport to the west side. Dech mentioned Monday that eliminating several at-grade crossings will make the project much more attractive for federal funding. The local share is already lined up.
Rarely do you do a project where you cut off 11 to 14 minutes for each train’s travel time, Noland said. “The opportunity to get big-chunk savings, it’s not something you find every single day.”
“We’ve accomplished a lot of them, but there’s still more out there.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.