The mayor of Hammond, Indiana, said the railroad company Norfolk Southern is reneging on its promise to partially fund the construction of pedestrian bridges at dangerous railroad crossings that were the subject of a ProPublica investigation. And without funding, the project will die, he added.
Authorities began pursuing construction of the viaduct in 2023 after the news organization and its news partner InvestigateTV reported on dozens of children crawling on top of, under, and under trains that were preventing them from getting to and from school in the city.
Hammond is located near Chicago, the nation’s busiest rail hub. At the time, the area served as a type of parking lot for Norfolk Southern Railroad trains to stop between two busy intersections. As trains become longer distances, problems are growing, not just in Hammond, but in similar rail communities across the country.
After publication, then-Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw called Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott to discuss a solution that included a pedestrian bridge. The mayor said Mr. Shaw had committed to paying the full cost of the project. A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told ProPublica the company has never made such a commitment.
The company has since made changes to its service, including stopping trains at different locations, to reduce the impact on Hammond and school children. Still, a child was caught on video jumping from a moving train after Norfolk Southern announced the changes.
For a while, the overpass effort seemed to have momentum. The company paid for the engineering and design plans, and in June 2023, the city received a $7.7 million federal grant for the project. The local match would have cost $2.6 million, which Shaw agreed to pay, McDermott said.
The mayor said the company had not made any written commitments and that Shaw was fired from the railroad in 2024. Mr McDermott is now accusing Norfolk Southern Railway, led by current CEO Mark George, of withdrawing from the handshake agreement. “The new guy has amnesia,” the mayor told ProPublica.
Mr. Shaw did not respond to messages seeking comment.
A spokesperson for the city of Norfolk Southern, which reported $2.9 billion in profits in 2025, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, disputed McDermott’s claims that the company had agreed to provide matching funds, but said it provided the city $450,000 and “assisted the agency in successfully applying for a federal grant to enable the city’s pedestrian bridge project.”
The spokesperson also said changes the company made in 2023 to reduce the impact on schools are working.
“More than two years later, this change continues to show results, including a nearly 50% reduction in blocked cross-country calls to our communications center at this location,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
However, local and state officials say intersections near schools in Hammond remain closed. Carlotta Blake-King, president of the local school board, told ProPublica that just last week, school district officials witnessed children crossing a stopped train at another location as they were leaving school.
A Norfolk South spokeswoman confirmed the blockage but said it was “not typical for that location”. The company said its trains can typically pass through the area without stopping. “We never want trains to stop and cause a nuisance to the local community. We encourage everyone to stay off the tracks at all times and not attempt to cross between vehicles,” the spokesperson wrote.
Mr McDermott also noticed that trains in southern Norfolk were starting to block roads again and said he was worried “slowly but surely it’s going to get back to normal.”
The mayor said: “I’ve already been fooled once by South Norfolk, so I have no reason to believe they will continue to try to reduce their impact on our city.”
McDermott said communities will eventually get some relief by installing vehicle overpasses in areas where children routinely encounter trains. However, the project will not be completed until at least 2029. It also includes a pedestrian path, which is useless for many students because they have to walk at least a mile to get there.
Democratic Rep. Carolyn Jackson, who represents the Hammond area in the Indiana House of Representatives and has introduced legislation to address railroad crossings that have been blocked in the past, said she doesn’t want children in her area to grow up “thinking that crawling under and over trains is a way of life.” She fears that without the bridge, “children will be seriously injured or killed in Hammond.”
McDermott said she feels a similar fear, adding: “I pray to God and I pray that this doesn’t happen.”
