The South Shore Line: celebrating 100 years of train service.

• Author: Richards, Rick A.
• Position: REGIONAL REPORT: SOUTH SHORE - Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District

MOST PEOPLE OUTSIDE of Northwest Indiana don't have a clue the state has a rail line that commuters use daily--just like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

In fact, says John Parsons of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, the state agency that oversees the train service stretching from South Bend to the Illinois state line in Hammond, and then on to Randolph Street in downtown Chicago, the line plays a vital role in the region's economy.

In what is the commuter line's 100th anniversary this year, Parsons says the South Shore is trying to make itself more vital than ever. But efforts to move ahead with the single largest project in the line's history, a $1 billion expansion that would have extended commuter lines south to Valparaiso in Porter County and Lowell in Lake County, failed in the Indiana General Assembly.

"We were so close," says Parsons, pointing to a chart that showed 82.5 percent of funding for the proposal had been lined up, including $500 million in federal funding promised by U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville.

The effort failed because the state legislature couldn't agree on a plan to provide $175 million in funding. The South Shore asked for $350 million in state funding, but the state offered only half, saying the remainder had to come from the four counties served by the South Shore, a proposal that proved to be a fiscal impossibility.

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Instead of funding the idea, it was deferred to a summer study committee in an effort to present a revamped proposal in 2009.

Parsons explains that the proposal is bigger than the entire investment made in the rail line since 1977. In the past 30 years, nearly $384 million has been spent on new cars, improved electric service to power the cars, new signals, a control center and new stations.

And that investment, Parson says, is vital to the Northwest Indiana economy. He says wages in Cook County, Ill., and in Chicago are 39.3 percent higher than Northwest Indiana's in every category except manufacturing. And, he notes, as gasoline prices climb, so does ridership.

Last year, a record 4,245,958 people rode the train, the second year in a row that ridership was more than 4 million. By comparison, ridership was just 1.7 million in 1977 when NICTD was created, surpassing 2 million in 1980 and then 3 million in 1987.

"Ridership increased as much in the last two years as it did in the 12 years from 1985 to 1997," says Parsons.

Another reason to...