WARSAW — Finding a way over or under the railroad tracks at Center Street in Warsaw to alleviate a decades-old problem of traffic gridlock may not be as easy as imagined by any of countless motorists who have had the occasion to wait in their cars for the train to pass.

The City of Warsaw had initially looked at an underpass, or grade separation crossing as too cost prohibitive. However a newly-announced grant from the Indiana Department of Transportation is giving at least a little more life to the issue. INDOT has earmarked $125 million for high-priority railroad projects on an 80-20 matching basis. At an estimated cost in Warsaw of $25-30 million, that could end up costing Warsaw upwards of $6 million.

“The number of trains that come in north-south versus the number of cars traveling east and west, those are the things that the state looks at when they decide who they’re going to fund,” said Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer. “This is a single track, it’s not a double track like a lot of communities have, although this is a pretty busy north-south.”

Thallemer said city officials have been meeting and will be meeting with representatives of the railroad company, Norfolk Southern as well as officials from INDOT to see if this project is doable.

But, Thallemer warns, in the cost-benefit analysis, there are a lot of negative obstacles that could run such an ambitious project off the rails.

“The problem is it takes out a lot of homes,” said Thallemer, who pointed out that an underpass at Center Street would likely require the acquisition and subsequent demolition of homes all along the tracks, which sit on Hickory Street.

“From a cost-benefit standpoint, is wiping out all that residential area and paying $6 million for that underpass — what’s the cost-benefit analysis on that?” Thallemer said.

And, despite the looming issue of displacing numerous Warsaw residents, the construction itself would be no simple feat of engineering.

“To build a grade separation would require fill to be added to the east and west along Center Street to construct retaining walls for the bridge approaches,” said Scott Manning, strategic communications director for INDOT. “Engineering analysis would need to be done to determine how to build the needed bridge approaches while also maintain traffic on SR 15 and Hickory Street. Additionally, because the rail lines run down the center of Hickory Street, engineering work would be needed to determine how to separate vehicle traffic on Hickory with rail traffic.”

According to Thallemer, the railroad company considers Warsaw’s crossing on Center Street to be a medium use crossing. He said there are other communities that have it worse than Warsaw.

Additionally, the railroad’s proximity to Detroit Street creates an issue since that thoroughfare is technically part of Indiana’s jurisdiction.

“A big problem is that SR 15 sits so close to that railroad that there’s no possible way for that underpass to come up before it hits 15, so it’s going to affect SR 15,” he said.

Thallemer added that in connection to property acquisition, tracks would have to installed to the east of the current tracks to provide Norfolk Southern a path through Warsaw while construction is ongoing.

“It would significantly change the neighborhoods in that area,” Thallemer said.

While it’s not clear whether the cost of the project in both dollars and lives affected will be worth the benefit of an underpass on Center Street, state transportation officials and representatives from the railroad are not ruling the project out yet.

“Norfolk Southern representatives plan to meet with Warsaw officials some time in May to discuss INDOT’s new “Local Trax” matching grant program, announced earlier this month,” said Jonathan Glass, manager of public relations for Norfolk Southern. “Norfolk Southern supports this initiative and will work with localities in Indiana, including Warsaw, on efforts to enhance public safety in the communities where we operate.”