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Plans for resuming full South Shore service on…

By TIM ZORN
PUBLISHED: March 20, 2024 at 12:49 p.m. | UPDATED: March 20, 2024 at 12:50 p.m.
Plans for resuming train service on the full South Shore Line are expected at Monday’s Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District meeting.

Michael Noland, the railroad’s president, said he expects to announce when trains will begin running again between Michigan City and Gary.

Train service on that part of the railroad has been disrupted since late February 2022, when construction work on the ...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - You will soon be able to ride the South Shore Line uninterrupted!

The train service has announced that it will end its temporary busing between the Gary Metro Center and Dune Park on April 9.

The busing has been in place since February of 2022 to accommodate the Double Track NWI Project, which will allow more people to get between South Bend and Chicago even faster.

“We sincerely appreciate passengers’ patience and cooperation as we near the completion of Double Track construction,” said Michael Noland, the president of South Shore Line, in a press release. “Our commitment to convenient and reliable service for our riders has never wavered, and we invite everyone to participate in the grand opening of Double Track service in less than two months.”

As work to double-track the South Shore Line between Gary’s Miller neighborhood and Michigan City's Uptown district is wrapping up, the Chicago-Indiana commuter railroad is looking into service improvements further east.

On February 28, there was a meeting of the Sandhouse Rail Group, a networking group established by the Northwestern University Transportation Center to connect railroad professionals with students and academics. Metra executive director Jim Derwinski and his South Shore Line counterpart Mike Noland talked about what’s on the horizon for commuter rail serving Chicagoland.

While Streetsblog already covered Derwinski’s presentation on speeding up the Metra Electric Line, Noland’s presentation had some newsworthy nuggets, too. He said that the South Shore Line is making plans to run express shuttle trains between the new Michigan City 11th Street station and the South Bend International Airport, the line’s current eastern terminus. The shuttles would make the trip within 30 minutes, down from almost 50 minutes under the current schedule.

In a follow-up interview, Noland clarified that this would be contingent on another major capital project. The railroad currently uses a single-track half-loop to reach the east side of the airport. The South Shore Line Airport Realignment project calls for building a brand new set of tracks to reach the west side of the airport. Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (the agency that runs the South Shore Line) previously indicated that the change would shave 13-15 minutes off South Bend-to-Millennium Park trips. That's because the current tracks are longer, and the train has to slow down because of the current track alignment and multiple at-grade crossings.

South Shore Double Track Project Wrapping Up

By Bob Gallegos

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District announced the end of long-term temporary bussing on its South Shore Line interurban between the Gary Metro Center and Dune Park stations effective Tuesday, April 9, 2024.

Buses have been hauling passengers between the stations since February 2022 to accommodate the Double Track NWI Project. The project eliminates a bottleneck where South Shore Freight services the huge steelmaking complexes near Burns Harbor, Indiana. The culmination of this work and completion of this segment allows for full train service to return to all SSL stations on April 9.

Work included adding a second mainline, removing the railfan-favorite street running along 10th and 11th Streets in Michigan City and construction of new stations in Portage/Ogden Dunes, Miller and Michigan City. This will allow the addition of 14-weekday trains for more frequent service, reduced delays and improved travel times. While trains are again running, contractors are still putting the finishing touches along the line.

Of note is the ongoing work west of the double tracking near Hammond where the South Shore is building an all-new branch to Dyer, about seven miles south of the current Hammond station. Many new bridges and fly-overs are already in place as of press time and work continues on the new line.