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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK <br /> environmental impact phase and will be going into the design and engineering phase fairly soon. <br /> With that, that gives South Bend the opportunity to have a much more aggressive travel time to <br /> Downtown Chicago. That is what got us to the point of looking at different options for a station <br /> location in South Bend. We were tasked with looking at these four(4) sites. Chocolate Factory, is <br /> just our term for it, the Honeywell site, the Amtrack site and a Downtown site near where the old <br /> Union Station was located are those four(4) sites. <br /> Mr. Wacker continued, The first task was to see if these were even feasible. It was important to <br /> make sure, before we started studying any site, that we can really do it. We had to ask if we could <br /> build something to get to these locations. The first location was the Chocolate Factory site. It was <br /> one (1) of the more challenging ones because there is no railroad going up toward the Chocolate <br /> Factory but it is a great field site. It is fairly hilly and there are some challenges there but we could <br /> certainly physically get there. The Honeywell site is on the route of the current line that goes to <br /> the airport. That quickly became the simplest of the four (4) sites as it is certainly feasible to just <br /> relocate the station closer.The Amtrak site is a little more complex. South Shore used to run toward <br /> that location and they still own some property there but there is a freight operation there. There <br /> I <br /> would be a little bit of work to get the freight moved out of the way so that passenger trains would <br /> be able to get there. And then of course, the last and most challenging would to be to get <br /> Downtown. It is feasible but it is not easy. It would require quite a bit of work and infrastructure. <br /> When Gary gets to talking about costs, you will see some of the reason for the higher costs is <br /> because there are more unknown variables to the Downtown location, but we can build and get <br /> there. <br /> Committeemember Davis interjected, Have they been emailed to us yet? <br /> Council President Tim Scott confirmed, Yes, I got it. <br /> Gary Foyle, Project Manager for AECOM with offices located at 100 South Wacker Drive, <br /> Chicago, IL stated Thank you, Earl. Good afternoon. We are going to be covering four 4 items <br /> g > Y g g g ( ) <br /> and they will be the travel time estimation,the ridership forecasting,the capital costs and then the <br /> operation and maintenance each of the four (4) sites. The starting points for the estimates of the <br /> travel times were the schedules that NICTD has created for their double track project. The whole <br /> focus of that initiative was to reduce the running time from points east on the railroad. The basic <br /> outcome was that there was not a substantial difference in running time from each of the sites. <br /> Each of the sites have different distances but given the curvature of the track and the speeds,in the <br /> end,the travel times were about the same. This (referencing the presentation available in the City <br /> Clerk's Office as well as the City of South Bend website)represents the fastest time and that range <br /> was from eighty-two (82) to eighty-four (84) minutes. They are all very comparable and that is <br /> compared to the current situation today. The fastest train on the South Shore from the South Bend <br /> Airport Station is one hundred and fifteen(115) minutes. <br /> Mr. Foyle continued,As part of this exercise,we developed the full schedules for each of the sites. <br /> That was important input into the modeling process. This is the result of the modeling process. We <br /> used a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) tool that they created called STOPS. I forgot what <br /> the acronym stands for but it is very much a standard tool that FTA encourages sponsors of <br /> federally funded projects to use. It is not clear this project would be federally funded but it seemed <br /> like an appropriate tool. It has been used for the work we have done for NICTD so it seemed like <br /> EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT <br /> 455 County-City Building 1227W Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If574.235.91731TM574.235.5567Iwww.southbendin.gov <br /> 3 <br />