Dunes Blog

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Lunacy.

That’s one word describes the plan. I’m an not in support of the closure of the Miller South Shore stop at all. I think it will be a terrible mistake that will hurt commuters and damage long term growth on the South Shore line. If anything the South Shore needs to be adding stations, not removing them.

This is just the latest attempt at building a Potemkin Village in downtown Gary. The logic behind closing the Miller Station is that it will force people to go to the new Gary Metro Center that’s being built by private developers. I want to know what the developers are smoking.

Do they really think that people will drive an extra 10-15 minutes to a new station, pay $3 a day to park, risk their car getting broken into or stolen just to take one for the team and support the new station? Nope, they most certainly will not. The current Gary Downtown South Shore station is underused and in perfectly good nick. The inconvenienced commuters will just drive over to Ogden Dunes South Shore stop, which is already at capacity or simply stop using the service all together, which is the last thing the South Shore needs while it’s trying to gain funding for it’s Valpariaso and Lowell extension. Mass transit needs encouragement for environmental reasons and congestion reasons, don’t give people a reason to ditch it for their cars.

Thankfully, the NICTD is rather dubious about the whole plan and that much was clear this past Friday when the consenus seemed to be that they won’t support closure of the Miller station but are going to have a vote on it at a future date. Miller residents and rail enthusiasts are making their voices heard and it looks like the powers that be might actually listen to them.

If this development of downtown Gary ever actually comes into fruition, let it stand on it’s own merits, don’t hold commuters hostage for the benefit of a private developer. Either way, Gary is a graveyard of failed revitalization efforts. The current downtown Metro center was the last attempt to draw people downtown and it didn’t work. Just look at the abandoned supermarket next to 80-94 for more proof.

Lunacy. I hope better heads prevail and commuters win on this one.

Another one bites the dust.

A couple of weeks the Union Tank Car company was in the news, they’re closing the plant in East Chicago and shifting production elsewhere. While this is a sad event for the employees, this is not a new type of event. It is indicative of the general decline of industry in Northwest Indiana over the past couple of decades.

Growing up here, I saw the steel industry collapse and come back to life several times. And this was in only the span of the last 15 years.

There will come a day when nothing is made here anymore.

I’m confident we are preparing for it well. Most people may not notice it, but NWI has many good institutions of higher learning. These relatively cheap school are churning out a well educated, young populace. And they’re finding that there are actually jobs for them in the area using their skills.

I think South Shore expansion will help negative affects of the decline of industry in The Region. Not only will it open NWI up to bring in employees from elsewhere, it will essentially make The Region more of a suburb to Chicago, and highly educated locals will be able to get quickly to jobs in Chicago, jobs that may not be readily available yet here.

What is happening in NWI is a microcosm of what is happening countrywide. No longer are we going to make things, simply consume them. Ideas and knowledge will be our biggest industry followed by a service industry to service the people in the knowledge economy. Northwest Indiana has a long a proud history of industrial power but I think it’s transitioning well into a new type of economy.

There will be people that suffer due to this shift. It will be very hard for some people to find new jobs and learn new skills after working in the same job for many years. That’s the nature of the capitalistic society we choose to live in. It’s called ‘creative destruction.’ You have to destroy to create. While the mills are destroying themselves, new industry will rise in it’s place. One day that too will collapse and be replaced by something else. On and on it goes.

One thing that young people are quickly learning as they enter the job force is that nothing is guaranteed. Your job is temporary, be it one year or five years. The best way to deal with this is to always be learning and always be looking for better opportunities. Never get complacent and expect a company to take care of you for the rest of your life. It’s just not like that anymore.

One thing is for sure, people will always be living in Northwest Indiana. And there will always be something for them to do. The trick is to make sure you’re doing what you WANT to do.

Trains are a way of life in Northwest Indiana. Because of our location at the bottom tip of Lake Michigan and the fact that we are as central as in gets in the US, NWI is bisected by many major freight and passenger rails lines. It is, to say the least, a pain in the butt sometimes. We could all probably go on a week’s vacation with all the time we’ve been sitting at railroad crossings.

The reason I bring this up is there is another train related accident in the news. Some teenager was walking along the railroad tracks, most likely listening to his iPod and got hit by a train. A couple weeks ago a two year old was hit by a train in Hobart. A further few weeks ago someone was killed up in Miller by a train because they decided to go around the gates.

I continue to be baffled by this. People, we’ve grown up being around these trains our whole lives. Why is it so hard for people to understand the danger they represent? Why can’t people understand basic safety when it comes to trains.

It’s simple. Never go around railroad crossing gates. EVER unless directed by a cop. Don’t walk along railroad tracks, especially wearing headphones.

Train travel is an important mode of transportation, it keeps the economy moving, it moves commuters and it’s much more environmentally friendly. The train companies do their best as far as safety goes, but they can only do so much. It’s up to regular people to do their part by showing some intelligence.

I feel bad for these people that get killed or injured by trains. I really do and I’m certainly not say that they deserve it. But I feel more sympathy for the poor men (and women) who drive these trains and have no control whatsoever over what they hit. Not only are you putting yourself at huge risk by going around the railroad gates, you could end up ruining someone’s life. All they did was go to work that day and because you couldn’t wait five minutes for the gates to go up, you destroyed yourself and the life of someone who didn’t have a choice. You never hear about the train drivers in these tragic stories.

I grew up in Ogden Dunes and have been the witness to may train tragedies over the years. There’s gotta be a better way to protect level train crossings to prevent this stuff. In the United Kingdom, they have gates that you simply cannot go around. Why can’t we do that here?

After one of the South Shore tragedies a few years ago in front of the former Midwest Steel plant, the state decided to best to way to prevent an accident like that from happening again was to simply build a bridge over the tracks. Problem solved. This is just one example.

It’s not feasible to replace all the crossing gates in the country nor is it feasible to build bridges over every crossing. But in a densely populated area like Northwest Indiana, there has to be a solution to a problem like this.

It all starts in the home. Parents need to drill into their children the basics of train safety. Respect your life by respecting the trains.

This past weekend, Indiana’s venerable Senator Lugar, reaffirmed his undying support for Gary International Airport, the unwanted stepchild of the Chicago Aviation industry.

He talked up his continued committement to airport expansion and getting the federal funding neccessary to faciliate it (also known as pork barrel spending).

Every year, and this is a cycle that play outs every year like clockwork; a new start-up airline pledges to use Gary Airport. Usually the flights go to places that one wouldn’t think immediately, ‘hey let’s go there!.’ Inevitably, no one actually does and the airline folds a few months later.

We’ve seen a kaleidoscope of names, SkyBus, SkyValue, PanAm, Hooters Air, Southeast. There is an even more exciting array of names for airlines that have pledged to use it in the future. But the runways at Gary are splattered with the dead bodies of failed airlines. So, this raises the question, will Gary Airport ever matter? Will it ever be taken seriously?

I really don’t think it ever will. It will continue to be a hub for corporate jets, antique aircraft, the Gary Air show and the Chicago Air and Water show. But I don’t think it will ever be anything more unless a major airline decides to make it’s home there.

And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they don’t. It’s the perfect location. 30 minutes from the Chicago Loop. Traffic is reliably good. Easy to get to. Small. So security lines. Cheap for the airlines to operate from.

All it would take is a serious commitment from Chicago and the airlines and it could easily be ‘Chicago’s Third Airport.’ But it won’t happen. It won’t benefit the City of Chicago, it won’t get a share of the revenue. Springfield won’t care because it won’t benefit them either. They’d much rather build a new airport from scratch in the middle of nowhere (Peotone).

Gary Airport is in the midst of expansion, money is being thrown at it. I hope it’s not a waste.

What do you guys think?