South Shore Line riders could soon see better on-time performance and added weekend service. That's the goal of a schedule adjustment being planned for the near future.
Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) President Mike Noland says on-time performance improved significantly since an August schedule change, but it still isn't where the railroad wants to be. "We're having days when we're 60-percent on-time, and early in the summer, we were reporting 25-percent OTP, which is not good," Noland told the NICTD board last month. "And we're not satisfied at 60 percent."
In addition to ongoing construction delays, the South Shore also had to deal with wheel problems on the train cars. Falling leaves can cause train wheels to slide along the tracks, resulting in flat spots on the wheels. When the flat spots exceed two-and-a-half inches, federal rules require that wheel to be taken out of service.
"If the train's in-service, you get it to the station, you get a new set of equipment in, you offload those people, and then you send that bad-ordered equipment back to the yard at 10 miles an hour," Noland explained.
But that happened a lot more frequently this fall, and Noland isn't sure why.
The increased service made possible by the Double Track project means more mileage is being placed on the rail cars, but Noland doesn't think that alone accounts for the increase in wheel problems. A wheel analysis didn't find any major abnormalities, he said, and flat spots weren't more prevalent on trains run by new engineers compared to more experienced ones.
In any case, the railroad seems to have solved the problem, but even how they did that is unclear. Noland said crews tried a number of different measures. That included stepping up inspections, putting the double-decker cars — which weren't affected — on early runs to clear the rails, changing braking procedures to increase the use of air brakes rather than dynamic braking, and borrowing rail brushing equipment from Metra.
"When we started to do that, I mean, literally, we were going from 10 issues a day down to zero," Noland told board members.
Still, Noland said he isn't sure which specific measures solved the problem.
He said the railroad plans to buy its own rail brushing equipment. "I don't know how effective it is," Noland acknowledged, "but it was part of our stew, if you will, the formula we put together to resolve this issue."
If the problem comes back in the future, Noland said the railroad can look at more expensive options. He said New York's commuter railroads have trains with lasers on the front to blast sediment off of rails.
