The city of South Bend excited many in the community Thursday when it announced it’s buying Union Station, and that Amtrak is interested in moving its station there.
But Amtrak has tried and failed to move downtown before.
Bloomberg has listed Amtrak’s South Bend station as one of the nation’s saddest, largely because it hasn’t moved into the beautiful and historic Union Station downtown. The small, modest cement block structure with little parking sits near the Honeywell plant on the city’s west side.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari Tuesday confirmed the passenger rail system’s interest in the move. Magliari said Amtrak generally likes to place its stations in historic depots when possible, especially in downtowns because they’re more accessible and near other transit connections.
"Generally speaking we like the idea of being in historic buildings, we like the idea of supporting downtowns," Magliari said. "But we haven't always been in a position to do that. We know that these downtown stations make a real difference, both in mobility and in helping downtown."
Magliari said the first thing Amtrak will do is meet with the city and learn its “vision” for Union Station. But Amtrak might want to make another call pretty quickly. As the owner of the downtown tracks, Norfolk Southern would need to approve the project, and they killed the idea 20 years ago.
About a block away from Union Station, local bus system Transpo in the late 1990s built its South Street Station. Transpo had planned for the station to also serve Amtrak. Transpo paid a firm more than $200,000 to design Amtrak’s portion of the station. The plan was to build the Amtrak platform across the tracks from the station. Passengers would access it from a tunnel under the tracks.
But Norfolk Southern ultimately refused to approve the project, fearing it would disrupt its already congested freight yard nearby, according to South Bend Tribune reports from that time.
In 2004 a frustrated Mary McLain, then Transpo’s general manager, told The Tribune, “The Norfolk Southern people were not just uncooperative, but obstinate in their position."
Jeff Rea, Greater South Bend Chamber president, was mayor of Mishawaka when it all happened.
"What I have always heard, I think, from the railroads, was the really high volume of traffic all kind of gets pinched right there in that downtown area," Rea said. "Amtrak wants to be able to move but they also want to not disturb freight that's moving through there. There used to be about 200 trains a day that came through there so all of that made it a little more difficult than planned."
Norfolk Southern officials did not respond to our interview request Tuesday.
Caleb Bauer, the city’s community investment executive director, said the city has not approached Norfolk Southern recently on whether it would be more receptive to an Amtrak station at Union Station. But Bauer said there is more railroad right-of-way to work with at Union Station compared to the Transpo station, and it’s not on a curve like the Transpo station.
"We believe the Grand Hall has alternate uses if it can't ultimately become an Amtrak station," Bauer said. "Plan A is the Amtrak but we think there's plenty of backup plans as well. And it's a building that we want to see be activated publicly.
"We would plan to engage with consultants imminently to begin preliminary design to explore the station relocation."
Reacting to Thursday’s news, some listeners have commented on Facebook that the South Shore should also move its station from the South Bend International Airport to Union Station. Some people think that could entice Chicago area workers to commute from the less costly South Bend, with the recently completed South Shore doubletracking project cutting time off the trip.
Rea cast a cloud over that possibility as well, mostly because of the enormous cost of running the South Shore tracks downtown.
"I think if everybody decided today they really wanted it downtown and were going to throw all their effort behind it, I'd be surprised if it wasn't 20 years before that happened," Rea said. "There's just a number of complications related to it, mostly the dollars available, because there's a fair amount of local dollars that would be required, and you'd also have to depend on some federal funds too. I just think it's a pretty cost-prohibitive thing."
