There's an old saw that the longer the window of opportunity stays open, more opposition can fly in.
That's exactly what happened last week when the federal Surface Transportation Board dimmed prospects of federal funding to expand Northwest Indiana commuter rail with a "not reasonably foreseeable" opinion.
The notion that Northwest Indiana could benefit from additional commuter rail surfaced 23 years ago when a rail transit study commission was formed. I was its chairman for 10 years and with the help of U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky and the Northern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, we received federal and local funds for the preservation of an abandoned rail corridor through Hammond and Munster and for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District to conduct federally required transit studies.
The project also caught the attention of the Federal Transit Administration Region 5 offices in Chicago, which was ready to roll forward as soon as local funds to match federal dollars were in place. And therein lies big trouble.
In a "while-Rome-burned-Nero-fiddled" climate where the 'T' word (meaning tax in its slightest increment for the common good) is locally verboten and our state legislature seems inclined to walk away from a $500 million federal grant for additional rail transit, the project's future is not positive.
It's happening when mass transit is even more crucial as gasoline prices rise and promise to stay there, when last year alone highway congestion cost our country $100 billion in lost productivity, and when Europe and Asia are sprinting ahead of the United States with 21st-century technology-enhanced rail transit such as Germany's and Singapore's driverless, computer-driven commuter trains.
For a clear local picture of what lost opportunity looks like, observe the Grand Calumet River, a weed-infested, silt-filled, environmentally contaminated shallow tributary flowing from Gary through Hammond on its path toward the Calumet Harbor in Chicago.
In 1889, Congress appropriated $50,000 to deepen and widen the Grand Calumet to make the river navigable from a point in Indiana to the river's mouth in Illinois at Lake Michigan. While Indiana diddled, Illinois gobbled up all of the money, ensuring its now-thriving shipping harbor.
The work was never started on the Indiana side, even though for the next 33 years several Hammond delegations traveled to Washington to garner more funds.
The money was never forthcoming. Today, the Illinois branch of the river remains a viable shipping route while the Indiana side has become little more than a marsh.
- The opinions are solely those of the writer. Contact her at janetcopywrite@sbcglobal.net.
