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NICTD wouldn't want these new lines to be electrified?
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Are you joking? These new lines are hard to justify as it is. Adding catenary and substations and electric locos or MU cars to run four trains a day would make it
unbelievably expensive.
The justification for the South Shore electrification 100 years ago was that it was an interurban line being built through city streets, so it needed to run more like a streetcar than a steam train. The IC was electrified in 1926 because the city demanded it in an era of coal-burning steam locomotives, 10 tracks along the lakeshore, and hundreds of trains a day.