The South Shore Line is planning to spend $2.75 million this year to improve pedestrian safety at its Hegewisch station following a fatal accident in 2024.
Grace Bentkowski, 22, had ridden a South Shore train home from Millennium Station to Hegewisch when she crossed the tracks and was hit by a train. The station requires passengers to cross the tracks to switch between platforms.
A federal grant is expected to cover $2.2 million of the cost.
Immediately after the accident, President and General Manager Mike Noland said, the railroad hired an engineering firm, Alfred Benesch, to look into ways to improve safety there.
“It’s taken some time to get here,” he said. “We didn’t want to fix one thing and break three other things.”
Federal safety rules had to be taken into account at the station, which has a small footprint.
Chief Engineering Officer Kevin Dwyan outlined the railroad’s response.
Trains now pull down to the far end of the platform before stopping as a way to improve visibility. Signs with arrows pointing where to look were installed.
“The main discussion was about flashers,” Dwyan said. They’ve already been installed at stations as part of the West Lake Corridor and Double Track NWI projects, and Hegewisch was planned as well.
Gates were decided upon, too, after a lot of discussion about how to make them work.
“Those laws and regulations have recommendations for where you put gates as opposed to flashers,” he said.
The team took a trip to Denver to see a similar setup and see how it would work. In putting gates in place, allowing an emergency exit to not be trapped in the path of an oncoming train is vital, so that’s included in the design.
Drainage, the grade crossing for vehicular traffic and other factors complicate the design, Dwyan said.
Tactile gates, for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, at all four corners would be installed to channel people away from traffic.
“We were having difficulty figuring out how to get a gate in there,” Noland said, so the Denver trip, to see an installation already approved by the Federal Railroad Administration, was fruitful. “We’re very happy to finish this process and put it into the capital plan,” he said.
The railroad is also setting aside money for 2027 for the Gary Metro station, Noland said, as it waits for Gary Mayor Eddie Melton to get a new board in place to oversee planning for a major overhaul or new station here.
When Melton, a Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District board member, was in the Indiana Senate, he secured money to upgrade the station.
“Gary Metro is low-level boarding,” Noland said. “It’s one of the last stations where customers board at the ground level.” The station’s old design adds delays in getting passengers on and off the trains.
Many disabled riders board there, and it takes an extra seven to 10 minutes to get passengers on board with a special lift, he said. High-level boarding benefits riders with suitcases, strollers, or people for whom stairs are a challenge.
The first step is to get engineering and environmental work to get the high-level boarding project off the ground. First, though, the railroad needs to know where the station will be and other details to get the engineering work done.
“I think we’re far enough along in that process” to have a placeholder for funding, Noland said.
The railroad is also setting aside $3.2 million as a placeholder next year for some kind of technology to deal with wheel slip and slide when leaves fall onto the tracks.
“I don’t know what that is. I’ll be honest with you,” Noland said. In the Boston area, a train with lasers mounted in front zaps the rails to deal with leaf slurry that creates an oil slick.
“We did better this year,” Noland said, but the railroad still experienced a lot of delays through mid-December as a result of the leaves.
“We need to study over the next couple of years what’s out there,” he said, so the South Shore Line is reaching out to think tanks to get expert advice.
Would power washing the rails work? “It’s not a small expense,” Noland said, but the delays are costly, too.
“Having this happen every single year is not a long-term solution. We need to do something differently,” he said.
Metra said it didn’t have problems in 2024, but did in 2025, according to Noland.
“If you have to send me out there in my retirement with a leaf blower, that would be my retirement job,” he said. Joking aside, that isn’t a great solution. “Blowing leaves off rails can throw rocks through windows, too.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
