(New Carlisle, IN) - A new South Shore train depot in New Carlisle is getting closer to reality. A public meeting was held there Wednesday night to look at options.
A plan to build a station in New Carlisle was unveiled in 2018, but was derailed by the pandemic. Now that the Double Track project is complete, and business is booming near New Carlisle, South Shore president Mike Noland says a new station is back on the agenda.
“We kind of put the study on the shelf, admittedly,” he said. “Then all of a sudden the GM plant comes along, and then Amazon comes along, and it really kind of reignited the idea.”
In addition to local residents accessing the route between South Bend and Chicago, Noland pointed to a potential need for workers to commute to the thousands of jobs projected at the Indiana Enterprise Center outside of town.
“I’ve heard people from Michigan City would love to be able to get on a train and ride over here to New Carlisle, jump on a employee shuttle and get to a job,” he said.
Another impending rail improvement at the South Bend International Airport could also boost traffic through New Carlisle. Plans are underway to reroute South Shore tracks from the east side to the west side of the airport. With that time-saving adjustment, Noland said, “we can run a two-car shuttle back and forth between 11th Street in Michigan City and the airport, and do it in less than thirty minutes.”
Three sites have been proposed for a new commuter train station in New Carlisle. Two near the U.S. 20 viaduct are likely landing spots. The original site proposed six years ago is the current location of the American Legion Post 297. In recent years St. Joseph County has purchased and cleared a mobile home park next to the Legion for such a development. The new proposal is for a parcel of land on the west side of the viaduct, along Marvel Lane. Noland said as many as six homes would need to be acquired to make that location viable.
The third option presented was a station outside of town closer to the Indiana Enterprise Center. That option did not appear to be popular among the 60 people who attended Wednesday’s meeting.
Amenities such as pedestrian tunnels, bicycle and golf cart paths, and possible commercial development were also discussed. “We certainly heard that folks would like us to have it be walkable, tied into the community, closer to downtown,” Noland said. A big impediment, he added, are the Norfolk-Southern tracks between the South Shore line and downtown, posing an “infrastructure challenge” that could affect cost.
Noland said wherever they put a new station, the project is still at least three to five years away.
