By VICKI URBANIK

As one board member put it, with gas prices projected to hit $5 per gallon in just two years, there will be more demand, not less, from the public for mass transportation like the South Shore commuter service.

“I don’t see (the likelihood) of less people” using the trains, said Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District board member Mark Yagelski.

With his motion, the NICTD Board unanimously agreed, at an emergency meeting Friday, to place an order for 14 double-decker South Shore train cars, ending months of discussion over the new train car purchase. The cars are due to arrive in two years.

In November, the NICTD Board rejected the bid from the car manufacturer, Sumitomo Corporation of America, when the base bid hit $54.6 million. But after NICTD staff renegotiated the costs, the priced was cut to $47.6 million, or just under $3.4 million per car.

Because the bid would have expired today, the NICTD Board called the emergency meeting for Friday to decide whether to go forward.

The new cars are needed to accommodate a growing ridership. Last year, the South Shore carried 4.2 million passengers, the most since 1957. Many rush-hour trains are standing-room only.

In the spring of last year, NICTD had hoped that the state, through Indiana Department of Transportation grant funds, would have provided the bulk of the funding for a 12-car purchase estimated at around $39 million. But the INDOT funding didn’t come through, prompting NICTD to come up with an alternative plan.

As it stands now, NICTD will finance $31.6 million of the total cost. The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority has already granted approval to chip in $17.5 million, with another $4.5 million coming from grant funds from the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.

NICTD is hoping that another $3 million will come from INDOT. “I think they’re going to make a decision on this pretty quickly,” said NICTD General Manager Gerald Hanas. If the $3 million isn’t secured, he said that cost would also have to be financed.

Hanas noted the federal government no longer provides discretionary federal funds for mass transit capital projects, so in the absence of other available funding, NICTD was forced to go into debt financing for the purchase. The length of term for the financing, through a municipal bond issue, will be 15 years.

The NICTD Board set its next meeting for March 23 in order to approve the financing documents.

The cars will be the Metra-styled two-story cars, though the seats will face longitudinally, not facing opposite each other as they are on the Metra cars. A two-car train will provide 233 seats.

Before the NICTD Board made its decision Friday to order the cars, Hanas outlined the risks involved with delaying the purchase.

NICTD’s Illinois counterpart, Metra, is in the process of ordering 160 new cars. NICTD would likely get a price break if it piggy backed its order on the much larger one, but Hanas said the downside is that the South Shore cars would be put on the tail end of the larger order and would likely take 24 to 30 additional months to arrive.

He also said that Metra currently doesn’t have the funding for its order, and the Illinois Legislature is debating various matters involving Metra. So Metra probably won’t place its order until very late this year.

Richard Curtis of Curtis Engineering, who evaluated the bid, said the bid now is about 18 percent higher than Metra’s car order about four and a half years ago. Design changes and inflation account for the price increase, he said. But another major factor is NICTD’s relatively small order.

It was noted that the South Shore car purchase will comply with the federal Buy American law, which requires that at least 60 percent of the components are American made and with final assembly in the United States. In this case, the assembly will take place in Milwaukee.

After the NICTD Board vote, NICTD board member and Porter County Council member William Carmichael said the new train car purchase is significant, since NICTD must add cars to keep up with its growing ridership as well as ultimately replace its aging fleet. “Eventually, you’re going to end up with cars that are not cost effective,” he said.

Posted 2/26/2007