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The Indiana Rail Road Co. (IRR), city of Indianapolis and Indiana Department of Transportation recently completed a $1.5 million project to build new tracks south of Indianapolis to prevent trains from holding up automobile traffic.

Averaging about 85 cars each, the trains were passing through the West Street crossing during morning rush hour, holding up traffic for lengthy amounts of time. The new tracks enable trains to bypass the West Street crossing.

"To store trains in our Senate Avenue freight yard required us to do some time-consuming car switching, and it wasn’t unusual for the West Street crossing to be blocked for up to 20 minutes at a time," said IRR President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Hoback in a prepared statement.

IRR is a 155-mile regional railroad that hauls about 105,000 carloads annually from Indianapolis to Illinois.