SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A study of a new rail alignment to South Bend’s airport will include freight considerations as well as service by South Shore commuter trains.
The St. Joseph County board of commissioners approved $119,000 on Wednesday for a study of different options to provide a more direct rail route to the airport, the South Bend Tribune reports. South Shore commuter trains currently take a slow, circuitous route to reach the airport, which serves as the rail line’s eastern terminal.
The study, by South Bend engineering firm DLZ Inc., will look at a possible route that could be used by both South Shore and freight trains, which would serve a planned rail-to-air logistics park. It will also look at a freight-only option, if South Shore service relocates to a downtown station under consideration by the city of South Bend. [See “South Bend Oks preliminary work on downtown South Shore station,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 21, 2018.]
The study is expected to be complete in 90 days.
I posted earlier on this South Shore/South Bend rethink at the airport.
The CSS currently has to slow down to take a route behind the Honeywell avionics factory and turn north following a former industrial lead that supported a now defunct gravel quarry.
When the current lead was extended to the airport and a siding was added, they extended the lead to a new industrial park built along Bendix Ave. and north of the airport with the purpose of building rail service along with passenger terminal for the airport.
That industrial lead extension has since been torn out due to lack of customers and the last two industrial customers on the airport feeder have left and the rail pulled. The gravel quarry switch has been removed, but the tracks in the quarry remain. The quarry is near the end of its useful life now after almost 100 years.
My proposal is to build a wye at Bendix Ave next to the Amtrak Station so trains either coming or going to South Bend can service the airport. Purchase the abandoned/unused Honeywell east parking lots on Bendix Ave to support the new ROW.
Once in place remove the “slow route” that runs behind the Honeywell plant. It is “slow” because it has a speed limit to reduce the risk of hitting Honeywell employees crossing the tracks to get to work in the north lot. In fact see if you can do a swap with Honeywell, turn over the ROW through their north parking lots and take over the unused ones to the east. They can be used for longer term Amtrak parking as well.
I am not sure why they keep pushing for an industrial use, even for logistics. The two leads they built with the airport extension all were torn out due to lack of customers. Now they want to put them back in.
I know it all has to go through due diligence, but it seems pretty straightforward to me.
I wonder, if a more direct line from the west to the airport is built, whether it might also be possible to build a more direct line to downtown South Bend, which might also serve the Notre Dame campus. I rode the CSS&SB from the airport to Chicago a few years ago, and it seemed quite a few passengers boarded at the airport station despite the slow approach of the current route. Three major potential sources of ridership?