More than 30 years after the idea germinated, the project to build the South Shore Line’s West Lake Corridor expansion received its final official funding Wednesday.
Officials from the Federal Transit Administration and the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District signed the FTA’s $354.6 million agreement to help fund NICTD’s $944.9 million project.
The rest of the funding will come from state and local governments, with more than $300 million of that from the state. The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority and most of the cities and towns in Lake County also have committed funds for the project.
“This is how it’s supposed to work,” Gov. Eric Holcomb said of the bipartisan cooperation on the West Lake project, which he called “the largest transit investment in Indiana history.”
West Lake will be a 7.8-mile rail line between Hammond and the Munster/Dyer border, along with four new stations. When completed in about four years, it will be the first new passenger rail line in northern Indiana since 1908, when the South Shore’s predecessor began operating.
West Lake trains will go into downtown Chicago. Passengers also can transfer in downtown Hammond to South Shore trains going east to the Indiana dunes, Michigan City and South Bend.
The trip from Dyer to downtown Chicago will take about 45 minutes, South Shore President Michael Noland said, adding: “I guarantee you can’t drive to Chicago from here in 45 minutes.”
Construction equipment from the project’s Chicago-based contractors, F.H. Paschen and Ragnar Benson Construction, sat by at the project’s ceremonial groundbreaking site, on property that will become West Lake’s Munster/Dyer station.
Holcomb, Noland and several other officials arrived at the ceremony aboard two South Shore cars pulled by South Shore locomotives, on CSX tracks that parallel the new West Lake route.
Elaine Chao, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and Jane Williams, the FTA’s deputy administrator, participated in the ceremony by remote TV links, as did US. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Gary, and Sens. Mike Braun and Todd Young.
After Williams signed the FTA’s funding agreement remotely, NICTD board Chairman Joe McGuinness signed a copy in person.
Earlier, Holcomb recalled being in the room when Visclosky spoke to then-Gov. Mitch Daniels about the West Lake project.
Visclosky was “passionate” about West Lake and what it would mean for Northwest Indiana to have a new connection to the Chicago economy, Holcomb said.
“We knew it would take some courage, focus and teamwork,” Holcomb said.
Visclosky, now near the end of his more than 30 years in Congress, spoke on video about the future.
The next steps for the South Shore Line, he said, include getting an FTA agreement to help fund NICTD’s Double Track project between Gary and Michigan City, and ensuring that the West Lake project is “well-implemented, on time and, hopefully, a bit under budget.”
Visclosky also urged that those projects benefit “every citizen of Northwest Indiana,” that the housing in new developments around South Shore stations is available to all, and that the goal of a regional bus system not be abandoned.
The idea of building a new South Shore line in western Lake County began in the 1980s. In the 1990s, NICTD acquired the former Monon railroad right of way in Hammond and Munster, along which the new West Lake line will run.
Noland said Wednesday that when he took his job at the South Shore Line six years ago, he was handed a “visionary plan,” developed by his predecessors, that included the West Lake Corridor and the Double Track projects.
Construction work on West Lake will begin as soon as NICTD gives Paschen and Ragnar Benson the notice to proceed, Noland said. The contractors, working on a design-build process, will determine where the work will begin, but he anticipated they’ll start in the middle of the project and work their way south, then north.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
