South Shore Line Airport Realignment

South Shore Line Airport Realignment is the name for a planned project which will see the South Shore Line passenger rail service move its main line's Indiana terminus from its current station on the east side of the South Bend International Airport to a new station at a location on the west side of the airport. The project will include the construction of new approach tracks. The project is expected to bring time savings, as the routing of the approach tracks to the existing station is circuitous, slow, and features many grade crossings.

When it was first opened in 1992, the current station on the airport's east side was originally intended to be a temporary location for the city's station. In 2006, officials began advancing plans to move the station to the airport's west side. In 2017, these plans again began gathering support. However, soon after, proposals for alternate locations for a station began to arise. A number of locations for a new replacement to its current terminus have been looked at, with a relocation to west side of the airport or a station in Downtown South Bend emerging as the top options. The option of moving the terminus to Downtown South Bend was championed by Pete Buttigieg during his tenure as mayor of South Bend. In late 2022, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD), the operator of the South Shore Line, advanced plans to begin construction on a new station at the west side of the airport as early as late 2024, commissioning an engineering study to prepare for this. Even if it builds a new station on the west side of the airport, NICTD has not ruled out the possibility of also building a future connection to Downtown South Bend. By 2022, NICTD began progressing plans for a new station on the west side of the airport. While some debate on whether the community should instead pursue a downtown terminus persisted, by early 2025 the project for a new station on the airport's west side was nearing final approval.