Planes, trains, automobiles: RDA’s strategic plan sets 20-year goals

In the past 20 years, the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority has been instrumental in bringing about the commuter rail expansion that had long been a dream. Now the RDA is looking ahead at what else it can accomplish.

The 212-page strategic plan released to the board and public on Thursday plans to continue the emphasis on Gary/Chicago International Airport in hopes of it being recognized as the Chicago area’s third major airport.

As the compact with Chicago ends, the Gary airport needs a new revenue strategy for future infrastructure investments, including increased connections to elsewhere in Indiana, the report recommends.

“The increase in airport activity and revenue is estimated to support an increase in gross regional product of $320 by 2050 for Northwest Indiana, increasing personal income by $565 million, and add over 3,200 jobs and 4,000 residents above the baseline,” the report says.

But the RDA is extending its aviation focus to Porter Regional Airport in Valparaiso as a future cargo hub for Northwest Indiana.

Increasing tourism

Redesignating Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as a national park in 2019 saw the number of visitors increase by an average of 4.9% a year compared to about 1.5% between 2008 and 2019. The new designation has made the region more visible and more attractive to visitors. The RDA wants to capitalize on that.

Improving access to Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park for tourism spending is planned, including turning a portion of U.S. 12 into a scenic byway, completing the Marquette Greenway and connections to the trail, establishing iconic access points from lakefront communities to the parks, and adding services, amenities and creating a regional identity.

The new Beverly Shores/Pines transit development district includes a plan to extend sewers west from Michigan City along U.S. 12 to serve the two towns, offering the possibility of adding businesses along the scenic byway to serve tourists.

Sewers could be added to other lakefront communities as well to both prevent future environmental problems from failed septic systems and encourage growth in those communities.

In Portage, the transit development district connected to the Portage/Ogden Dunes South Shore Line station could bring lodging for park visitors as well as trail access and other development.

Redeveloping two NIPSCO power plants — Bailly is already closed and Michigan City is expected to be shut down at the end of 2028 — is estimated to bring nearly 400 new residents to Northwest Indiana and jobs for roughly 300 people. Private investment is estimated to produce $27 million in economic output annually by 2050 and $48 million in personal income.

Highway congestion

Congestion along Northwest Indiana’s interstates “remains a major barrier to trade between the city of Chicago and other key markets in the region and beyond,” the report says.

Congestion costs totaled $556.2 million in 2022, the report says, so the goal is to reduce that cost by 10%.

Among the recommendations are open-road tolling along the Indiana Toll Road to keep traffic flowing, eliminating the barriers at the state line and Portage, and considering alternative routes for a new regional highway.

“While these steps will require additional feasibility studies and collaboration with state and federal agencies, the region’s economy is directly tied to transportation mobility improvements, and continued delays only deprive the state and regional of significant fiscal returns,” the report says. “Decades of delay only serve to deprive the state and the region of fiscal returns.

Already, the Indiana Department of Transportation is looking at ways to improve U.S. 30 traffic and making improvements to the Borman Expressway to address traffic issues. But the Borman Expressway is maxxed out in terms of adding lanes.

Then-Gov. Mitch Daniels proposed a route for the long-discussed Illiana Expressway, but that plan got shelved amid intense public opposition.

Expanding commuter rail

When the West Lake Corridor project was still in the discussion stage, the vision included extending the new service far beyond Dyer, the route expected to become operational in March.

The RDA plan looks to extend service to other communities as well as upgrading existing stations.

Expanding the commuter rail network would add stations in Dyer, Schererville, St. John, Highland, New Elliot, Crown Point, University Park in Gary, Hobart, Wheeler, and downtown Valparaiso.

“At the same time, new commuter rail stations will attract investment from private developers to construct housing, retail, dining and more to absorb increased consumer demand around the stations,” the report says.

Connecting Hoosiers to jobs in Chicago isn’t just about improving employment prospects for existing residents. It also brings more residents to Northwest Indiana and, consequently, additional amenities.

“Employees find jobs at higher wages or more to their liking and skill sets. Employers have a greater pool of workers to pick from. Families can locate in lower-cost housing with the same amenities,” the report says.

By 2050, the report predicts, annual commuter earnings will have increased by $91 million.

Northwest Indiana’s population will increase by 7,300 residents by 2050, with an increase in employment of about 6,500 jobs.

Short-term employment will spike because of the construction jobs to support private development around the new commuter rail stations. Steady job growth “is largely attributable to job opportunities supporting the operation of new private development in retail, multifamily housing, dining and more,” the report says.

The RDA’s 2016 strategic plan predicted $2.7 billion in new investment by 2037, and it’s already on pace to exceed that number, the report says.

Extending the West Lake route to St. John would be a boon to commuters, reducing travel time to 1 hour 50 minutes for drivers to 48 minutes by train, the report says.

From Crown Point, the travel time would shrink from 1 hour 50 minutes by car to 46 minutes by train.

From Valparaiso, it would be 55 minutes by train instead of 1 hour 50 minutes by car.

Building out the new train routes would be costly but would further relieve congestion on highways as well as attracting more residents and businesses.

The Valparaiso route would cost more than $1.1 billion with a similar but slightly higher cost for the Crown Point route. The St. John route would cost an estimated $416 million.

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the South Shore Line, is wrapping up work on its own strategic plan. That plan is expected to include relocating the existing South Bend station from the east side of the airport to the west side after a “temporary” relocation decades ago.

NICTD also plans to move its Hudson Lake station, which sees little use, to New Carlisle, where business is booming.

There are 11 transit development districts now surrounding existing stations, with Valparaiso and South Bend eligible for future ones. Additional TDDs — think TIF district but with the added incentive of capturing the increase in income taxes to sweeten the pot — would be likely for a 320-acre area surrounding future stations.

In Valparaiso, the train station likely would connect with the bus station located on the north side of the Journeyman Distillery complex. The city currently operates two bus services — the ChicaGo Dash buses to Chicago and the V-Line buses that circulate within the city.

Land development entity

The RDA is well on its way toward establishing a land development entity as a nonprofit to work with agencies and municipalities to serve as a sort of real estate alchemist, assembling parcels, helping with environmental cleaning and attracting private investment to properties that are currently problematic.

In addition to setting up the nonprofit, the RDA has offered $5 million in seed money to get it started.

Among the issues the LDE will deal with include clearing up murky ownership issues.

The LDE is expected to help with redevelopment efforts surrounding train stations, in the transit development districts, but also throughout Lake and Porter counties.

Northwest Indiana has thousands of acres of underutilized, vacant, and contaminated land as well as 10 active U.S. EPA Superfund sites and hundreds of brownfields. Cleaning up all of them would require hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Although the Region is much cleaner environmentally than in past decades, this area still ranks as one of the most polluted areas in the country,” the report says. “Many of these contaminated sites are within legacy cities with minority populations or near or within national park and sensitive natural areas. Realizing the region’s opportunity will require substantial investments in environmental cleanup over multiple decades.”

The LDE will offer a multijurisdictional to what has been an intractable problem.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.