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South Shore offers FREE RIDES into city

Andrew Steele

CHESTERTON — The South Shore Line will offer free westbound rides during non-peak hours next week as a way to introduce — or reintroduce — travelers to the commuter rail service.

Michael Noland, Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District general manager , announced the Take Us for a Free Ride program Monday. It will offer free westbound rides all day on Sunday and during off-peak hours Monday through Friday next week.

“There are a lot of people out there who need to give the South Shore a try,” Noland said. “This is a way for us to get the word out.”

He said Sunday ridership in March tends to average 2,500 to 3,000, and weekday non-rush hour numbers are about the same.

The westbound half of those will be free, and Noland said NICTD officials hope they can increase total ridership to “five, six, 7,000 folks jumping on” during the promotion.

The free weekday rides will be on trains arriving in Chicago at 9:30 a.m. or later. “This is a time of day we’ve got a lot of capacity,” Noland said.

One-way fares from Indiana stations range from $6 at Hammond to $13 at South Bend.

Passengers will pay those regular fares on their eastbound rides back to Indiana.

In addition to providing access to museums and other attractions, the promotion coincides with the Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier.

NICTD board member Jim Biggs, a Porter County Council member, noted the South Shore is publicly owned.

“We’re looking for ways for (residents) to discover it, or rediscover it,” Biggs said.

Noland said he hopes the promotion encourages Chicagoans to use the train to visit Northwest Indiana next week and ride home for free.

“We’re very much open to our friends in Chicago to come out here,” Noland said.

Noland noted low gas prices offer competition to the train. “We’ve been watching it,” he said of the impact of low fuel prices. “We’ve been talking about things to bolster our off-peak ridership.”

The South Shore is also installing wifi on all its trains, and will begin allowing bicycles on weekend trains in April, in the effort to encourage ridership.

http://www.nictd.com/freeride

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[taxthedeer]

The free WIFI is nice. You can watch a movie while riding the train.

They are only allowing bike on weekend trains and next week the fare is free going but you still have to pay for the flip trip.

I always drive to the Dune Park station in Chesterton to take the train because in the past I've been delayed for almost an hour on the flip trip at Sheridan Ave. either waiting for a westbound train to pass on the single track, waiting for an Amtrak to pass or signaling issues in Michigan City.

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Still gotta find out how that weekend bike train is gonna work out. Its gonna be great, cuz I don't have to disassemble, reassemble, then disassemble, again.

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Glad I didn't take the 'freebie' today.


South Shore train derails; no injuries

Empty suburban commuter train derails; no injuries

Associated Press 1 hr ago

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — A South Shore Line train has derailed in Michigan City, but no one has been injured.

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District said on its website the derailment happened Saturday morning at Carroll Avenue in Michigan City. It also said all service on the South Shore Line is suspended until further notice.

No passengers were on the train, according to a statement from NICTD.

The statement also says the train was derailed as it was being moved into position, and there damage to the track and overhead wire.

South Shore personnel have been sent out to the scene to make repairs as quickly as possible, according to the statement.

Metra will be honoring all forms of South Shore tickets during the service outage.

[taxthedeer]

Just heard on WGN news that NICTD is raising fares 2 1/2% to finance rail improvements.

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Just heard on WGN news that NICTD is raising fares 2 1/2% to finance rail improvements.

I don't mind...as long as you can bring a bike along with you.

http://bit.ly/1RqZjqC

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South Shore to continue bikes-on-trains

Andrew Steele

CHESTERTON — The South Shore Line will continue giving bicyclists rides to and from Chicago next year after deeming this year's pilot bikes-on-trains program a success.

"In April, we put our toe in the water," South Shore President Michael Noland said at the railroad board's year-end meeting Dec. 16. "We didn't know what to expect."

The weekend program, which distributed six bike-hauling cars among seven trains in each direction, provided more than 1,000 rides to bikers riding from and to South Bend, Dune Park, East Chicago, Hammond, Hegewisch and the Chicago stations. The bike cars ran from April to November.

The railroad had some hiccups managing the bike rack-equipped cars, but "got to be pretty good" about deploying them at the right times on the right trains, Noland said.

The main change for 2017 will be to add a weekday train in each direction to the program. The westbound train arriving at Millennium Station at 6:55 a.m., and the eastbound train leaving Millennium at 3:57 p.m. will have cars with bike racks.

The trains make limited stops, and are early enough in rush hour to have capacity, Noland said.

Other changes will include a more robust marketing effort, and offering bike trains on some weekends they skipped last year during big events in Chicago.

Ridership numbers from 2016 suggest a similar number of Region bikers heading to Chicago, and city bikers heading to Northwest Indiana.

Westbound trains leaving Indiana in the morning and early afternoon carried about as many bikers as the westbound trains in the evening and night. And a similar mix was recorded for eastbound trains leaving Millennium Station — about as many riders left Chicago in the early part of the day as the late.