Madison-Milwaukee High Speed Rail

[Invader3K]

Right but if you have to wait for a bus and then ride a bus, that's an extra 30 - 40 min to your trip which sort of removes the "high speed" from high speed rail and will knock down ridership quite a bit, IMO.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, homer. I'm not sure the average citizen is going to want to go through the extra hassle. They keep trying to talk up how great this is for business people, but I think the average business person won't want to waste all the extra time taking a bus to get to downtown Madison, etc.

[paul253]

If I can take a train at 110 mph from Milwaukee to Madison, you'd
better believe I'd choose it ahead of a car. And getting people out of
cars is a *good* thing.

This statement I think sums up the issues I have with it. For one, just looking at a map I would say that if it stops at the Dane County Airport its not a Milwaukee to Madison line. That'd be like a train stopping in Brookfield is a "Milwaukee stop". To me, if I have to get off the train and onto a bus just to get into the city, and then get onto another bus in the city to get where I need to go, it's not convenient and I am not going to take it. As I stated before, this isn't Chicago. You aren't going to be stuck on the freeway for two hours trying to get home. If they don't do it right, people won't use it.

Also, trains now-a-days can go a heck of a lot faster than 110 mph.....so why are we settling on this? I have said before if we are going to spend preposterous amounts of money on this, we may as well do it right. Build separate tracks and get trains that can go 150-200 mph. Can you imagine getting to Minneapolis from Milwaukee in an hour and a half? That'd be something worth taking.

[homer]

I think the point to emphasize is that this is part of a larger plan for high speed from Chicago to the Twin Cities. I live in Chicago and you better believe I'd be taking a train to Madison instead of driving I-90. That's probably where the bulk of the eventual ridership comes from. The Milwaukee to Madison part is just frosting.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, alternatively, if I could drive to Madison and take the train from there to the Twin Cities, that would be hugely appealing.

[thebruce44]

I think the point to emphasize is that this is part of a larger plan for high speed from Chicago to the Twin Cities. I live in Chicago and you better believe I'd be taking a train to Madison instead of driving I-90. That's probably where the bulk of the eventual ridership comes from. The Milwaukee to Madison part is just frosting.

Bingo. You guys are looking at the small part of a much larger project. The idea is to connect Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Minn, Milwaukee, Joliet, Waukegan, and Madison by rail probably in that order. People wanting a line up to Appleton and GB are probably setting their sights too high for now. And yes, it will be government subsidized I am sure just like Amtrak is right now. If they ever do turn a profit on this thing it would just be icing on the cake since there are tons of other benefits.

 

Also, as a Transportation Engineer who may very well be working on this project (but hasn't read anything about the Madison area issues) I just want to note that you guys have no idea what a pain it is to get the necessary land acquisition for this type of thing. The right of way requirements for a train that can travel over 90 mph is going to be relatively large. Perhaps the reason the Madison Airport is a target is because of this. I doubt going underground is an option and raised track is super expensive. If land is available, they may want to stop at the airport on the way up to Minn. If there are several busses waiting there for every arrival how long would it really take to walk off the train, onto a waiting bus, then to the capital, UW, or Middleton? Its not like you would have to wait for the next bus 20 min from your stop, they would coordinate the lines.

 

One last thought...the idea that this is a bad idea because we are a car loving culture is exactly the problem. Sure, we can drive our cars all we want now, but this infrastructure needs to be in place when we run out of oil or the price skyrockets. Oil is already pricy and we are a decade behind on alternative fuel research. I sure hope we don't wait until there is a desperate need for high speed rail in this country before we start finally building it. Funding for step 1 of 10 is now ramping up. After planning, land acquisition, and surveys are all completed the engineering on this is going to take a couple of years. Then they have to actually build the thing. The timeline of this is already overdue in my mind and I hope the Midwest gets the necessary funding to move forward. While some may think there isn't much demand, this area of the country is perfect for high speed rail.

[owbc]

The train issue is complicated.

First of all, I will say that I am all for high speed rail. However, this is not really a high speed rail, since it only averages 85 mph or so. That's only 10-15 mph faster than the freeway. The reason that it has to be that slow is because we do not have the technology in America to make real high speed trains like Europe/Asia--and they can't export the jobs or it would defeat the purpose of the stimulus. If the train could average over 100 mph, I would start to get interested, but they only say the max speed because it sounds better.

Second problem is that the Badger Bus already services this route (and it now goes to Minneapolis also!). I was a UW student for 4+ years and now I work in Madison with family in Milwaukee. I rode the Badger bus frequently and was always satisfied with the service. It picks up in walking distance of downtown, costs only $35 round trip, and has convenient drop off points in suburban Milwaukee/Waukesha. It does have a few stops so the trip takes about 1 1/2 hour, or 60 mph. The government needs to remember that they are competing with this service--I'm sure Badger Bus could provide a fine service with $800 million--that would be enough to add an extra bus/carpool-only lane to I-94 which could conceivably have a higher speed limit than the standard lanes! Anyway, I doubt that I would ride the train more than once for the novelty, but it will almost certainly cost more than the bus and only save about 20 minutes. Not worth it unless the station is built downtown, which it most likely will not be--remember buying private property creates lots of controversy. The only other idea I can think of is to include free city bus tickets with the purchase of a train ticket and design a special bus route to get people to/from downtown.

The other problem is the operating costs. A bus is not really that expensive to keep up, but a train is extremely expensive. It takes one person to drive a bus. There is not even a bus station anymore in Madison, so there is nobody on staff at the stops. The train needs at least 3-4 staff on board in addition to staff at each of the stations, staff to maintain the rails, money to upkeep the stations, money to upkeep the trains, etc. In other words, it can not be profitable, period. In fact, the average annual loss will probably be in the tens of millions of dollars. This means that the taxpayers get to cover an expensive service that is already provided by private industry. My only suggestion is to impose a tax on businesses along the route who see economic benefit from the rails. Most likely, you will be paying for the train whether you use it or not--and it will be a significant sum of money. Even worse, other posters suggest that the route will be most convenient for people going from Chicago to Minneapolis--so Wisconsin taxpayers will be subsidizing a rail line that helps commuters get quickly through our state without spending money at our gas stations or roadside attractions!

I am also curious about the "success" of the Milwaukee-Chicago rail line. It has seen recent popularity increases, but I wonder if that will be the cas3 when the 8-lane I-94 is finished. Most likely, people will choose to drive. I have gone to Chicago many different ways, including the train. I found that the most convenient/cheap is to drive to the northern suburbs, park for free, and take the commuter rail into the city. A group of 4 of us once took the train to Chicago: the total cost was $160! Gas is going to have to cost about $10/gallon to make that a smart decision for a family.

I have a 30 mpg car, so it only costs about $7 in gas to make the one-way trip right now. Unless you are totally going to commit to public transportation, meaning $10-20 billion+ to have an integrated transportation system with commuter rail, subways, more bus lines, bike trails, etc, I just do not see how this is a good idea. Better to spend the money developing hybrid/electric cars.

[homer]

I am also curious about the "success" of the Milwaukee-Chicago rail line. It has seen recent popularity increases, but I wonder if that will be the cas3 when the 8-lane I-94 is finished. Most likely, people will choose to drive. I have gone to Chicago many different ways, including the train. I found that the most convenient/cheap is to drive to the northern suburbs, park for free, and take the commuter rail into the city. A group of 4 of us once took the train to Chicago: the total cost was $160! Gas is going to have to cost about $10/gallon to make that a smart decision for a family.

--------------------------------------------

 

A few points on that:

- ridership began to increase even before it was announced they were widening this stretch of road

- There was never a traffic problem on that section of highway....there still isn't and it's down to two lanes on the northbound side.

- It will always be faster to take the train at rush hour. Always. The traffic issues reside once you get about 10 miles from downtown Chicago. The train is almost always a 90 minute ride downtown to downtown. A car is 90 minutes on Sunday morning - and might be 180 minutes at rush hour.

- It will always be cheaper to drive an entire family than take a train or fly. The cost benefit of a train is topped out at a group of maybe two people

- travel by car may be cheaper in real dollars, but you still have to drive, pay attention to the road, deal with accidents, etc. My time is valuable and worth something too. If I can work, read, sleep, drink, etc. that means a great deal to me.

[drezdn]

If they can extend it all the way to Minnesota with their own track (between Watertown and Madison, this will be the case) this will be really forward thinking. While a line from Milwaukee to Madison might not be impressive, a high speed line connecting Chicago and the Twin Cities would be really useful for business travels who might otherwise consider flying. It would increase the usefulness a bit if there was a stop for Miller Park, especially considering how close the Canadian Pacific lines in Milwaukee run near it.

 

Personally, I'd much rather take the train to Madison or Chicago than drive there, as I can read, sleep or surf the internet.

[JimH5]

This is a huge waste of money. Many of the people who support it are thinking about how convenient it would be for them to use on an occasional basis--to go to a football game or baseball game, etc.

 

These trains will run 7 days a week, and there's no guarantee that they will operate around the schedule of a sports team, let alone drop you off near any stadiums. And are you sure there will be a train leaving Milwaukee after the game is over?

 

There simply aren't enough people in Wisconsin to merit high speed rail.

 

We currently have a network of buses that often drive around empty, showing us clearly what our appetite is for mass transit.

[paul253]

Bingo. You guys are looking at the small part of a much larger project.

The idea is to connect Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Minn, Milwaukee,

Joliet, Waukegan, and Madison by rail probably in that order. People

wanting a line up to Appleton and GB are probably setting their sights

too high for now. And yes, it will be government subsidized I am sure

just like Amtrak is right now

 

Bruce...I really respect your opinion as an engineer. But I think this paragraph here underscores two major problems. One, if they can't even get the Milwaukee to Madison route done correctly, can we really expect them to get the rest of it right? As I said, a Dane County Airport Stop is not a Milwaukee to Madison line. It's a stop near Madison on the way to Minneapolis. Second, if the government already subsidizes Amtrak, why build a competing rail? Are they going to subsidize both of them? That's absurd. Third, have there even been any studies done to see how people are going to ride this thing? Just from this board, and including myself, I see a lot of......"well I'll ride it but only if...." I haven't seen any studies published as to how many people are expected to ride this thing. Yet they are just dead set on doing it.

 

Sure, we can drive our cars all we want now, but this infrastructure

needs to be in place when we run out of oil or the price skyrockets.

Oil is already pricy and we are a decade behind on alternative fuel

research. I sure hope we don't wait until there is a desperate need for

high speed rail in this country before we start finally building it.

Funding for step 1 of 10 is now ramping up.

 

A couple things about this. By the time we run out of oil we'll probably have had to rebuild this line 5 times. And if running out of oil is really a concern, we have plenty of new areas where we can drill for more. As far as the infrastructure goes, what's going to end up happening is we are going to have to choose....rail or interstates. The interstates are going to rot away as this money pit sucks up all the funds needed to fix the roads. New taxes are going to be created to fund this darn thing and you'll end up paying a heck of a lot of money for whether you ride it or not.

 

ridership began to increase even before it was announced they were widening this stretch of road

 

Ridership has increased lately and it still pales in comparison to how many people use the roads. We need to stop comparing ourselves to Europe. Just because it works there doesn't mean it will work there. If you want people to start using trains and change mindsetz, then do it right. Make it small (Milwaukee to Madison only). Make it fast (twice as fast as it would take to get there by car). Make it convenient. Once you show people you can make it work, then you can expand it. Hell then people will want you to expand. Instead we are building this massive massive brand new rail line before we really know if anyone is going to use it. We're even building a train in frigging Milwaukee. Seriously, it takes 10 minutes to drive from UWM to downtown but we need to build a stinking train instead. This should not be a political issue. It should be a "if we need it we will build it" issue. Right now I question if we need it. And I really question the "if you build it they will come" mentality when we have no money to build it.

[TooLiveBrew]

homer wrote:

Right but if you have to wait for a bus and then ride a bus, that's an extra 30 - 40 min to your trip which sort of removes the "high speed" from high speed rail and will knock down ridership quite a bit, IMO.

That's if Madison does absolutely nothing to help with their bus schedules. If there were a stop like that, and the city did nothing to better accommodate arrival times with higher-frequency or better-timed bus runs, then yes I agree it wouldn't be all that appealing.

[Baldkin]

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/1075/madison.gif

For those unfamiliar with Madison geography, I put in the two pink dots where the "proposed" stops would be. One is the airport, in the NE corner of the map, the other is at First St and E Washington Ave.

 

The biggest issue is, as always with Madison, the Isthmus. If the train isn't going to go through the Isthmus, then the airport is probably the only place it can stop. MAYBE, it could follow the Beltline (12/18) into town and go to Campus, almost along Park St.

[RyDogg66]

I love the idea of high speed rail. Unfortunately, I dont think I would ever use it. I have a family of 5 and we will soon be a family of 6. One minivan solves our problems. Having to coordinate a young family with public transportation and train stops, schedules, etc. etc. would be a nightmare.

[Polish Falcons]

To opponents who suggest this is a waste of money I just want to make one point.

 

Yes this project will likely require operating subsidies but it's not like roads, highways, and interstates aren't heavily subsidized with tax dollars. If I'm reading the State of Wisconsin's DOT budget documents correctly I see that $407M or 6% of $6.6B goes towards transit while the vast majority of the remaining $6.2B goes towards roads. Those are all tax dollars; WI doesn't collect tolls. It's free to drive on the roads I help pay for. It seems like transit opponents always suggest that the only way a rail project can be viable is if it turns a profit on ridership, while not acknowledging the massive amounts of tax dollars spent on roads only because that is their preferred mode of transportation. Not that I don't want rail projects to generate as much revenue as possible, but this transportation financing dynamic seems like a severely inequitable double standard to me.

 

Aside from ridership fare a lot of economic activity can be generated via Transit Oriented Development around well planned rail stations, which is why I agree with those who want Madison to have a station somewhere other than just the airport. As I understand that is likely to happen.

 

All that said I don't especially blame people for discussing the demand for a rail link between Milwaukee because that is a legit concern. But as a person who prefers rail to car I would like to see a more equitable financing structure or at the very least put that into the discussions framework. The cost of roads is completely ignored when comparing road vs rail and that really gets my goat.

 

Edited grammar

[drezdn]

There are several reasons this is good news for Wisconsin.

 

1) It's a decent chunk of money the Fed is investing in the state.

 

2) It means more jobs in the state, including manufacturing jobs... From trains.com (can't link because it's subscriber only) " Talgo, a railcar builder in Spain, has its eyes on a few different locations in the state where the cars would be constructed. Also, the state will buy eight new energy-efficient locomotives, which might also be built in Wisconsin."

 

3) It would make easier to live in Milwaukee and work in Madison/Chicago, or vice versa.

 

4) Even if you never use it to ride on, it makes your driving easier by taking cars off the road.

 

5) The drive on I-94 from Pewaukee to Madison has to be the most boring stretch of road in the state.

 

6) Rail gets the least amount of funding from the federal government. You pay far more in taxes for roads and airports you'll never use than trains.

[owbc]

The difference is that I use--in fact, I need the road system to be well-maintained, reliable, clear of snow, etc. Wisconsin does not need this train. This is nearly a billion dollars coming to the state--and we are spending it on a rail system that runs right next to a highway. The infrastructure in this country is falling apart and we are going to build a train--because it looks good in the short term for politicians. What about the Milwaukee sewer that dumps billions of gallons of raw sewage into Lake Michigan? What about the Asian Carp? What about fixing bridges? What about the budget shortfalls and layoffs at public schools? What about the Milwaukee County Parks system, which is slowly falling into despair? What about doing something to save the manufacturing jobs that are still here? The list goes on and on.

 

Instead, most of the 800 million is going to be spent on steel and iron. Some will go to construction jobs, but those are just temporary. It is almost all for raw materials and construction. How many actual permanent jobs will this create? Even if you try and include the potential economic benefit, you are still talking about a relatively small amount. Yes, they are building the trains here, but the Milwaukee Road used to crank out thousands of trains. We are talking about eight train engines. What would it have cost to save GM in Wisconsin and build thousands of cars here? Certainly not $800 million or even $100 million.

 

Furthermore, this does not change the fact that the roads still need to be maintained with the same amount of money as before. Railroads are not going to replace any roads. For railroads to be anything but a niche attraction for a few wealthy businessmen and tourists, we would have to completely restructure our cities. The suburbs would have to be compacted/removed and the US would have to model itself like Europe, with mostly empty country and the population confined to dense urban areas. It makes much more sense to continue maintaining the highways and work toward zero-emission vehicles powered by green energy and batteries. By the way, there already is a "toll" on all roads in Wisconsin. It is charged by the gallon of gas--$0.513 per gallon, which is good for 8th highest in the nation. So for every 20-25 miles you drive, you pay about 50 cents to maintain the roads. An excise tax is extremely fair in that context, although like the trains, or any other form of transportation, it has to be further subsidized beyond the fares/taxes.

 

I love the idea of public transportation. It is great to be able to get work done while you are commuting, instead of wasting time in traffic. However, our cities are just too spread out for it to work. Even if the train is put in place and connects all of the major cities in the Midwest, it will still require added steps of inconvenience to use for any person that owns a car.

[nate82]

If I can take a train at 110 mph from Milwaukee to Madison, you'd better believe I'd choose it ahead of a car. And getting people out of cars is a *good* thing.

The train won't go 110mph though. That is its top speed the average speed that the train will hit is somewhere around 60mph I believe. Most of the time you will be going around 30mph - 55mph. The train only cuts the time to transit to Madison by about 5 or 10 minutes I believe nothing drastic really. If the train made more stops this would make more sense. Destinations they should be adding are the Appleton/Green Bay area, 2 or 3 stops in the downtown Milwaukee area, Wisconsin Dells, and 2 stops around Madison one near the campus and one near downtown. I would use the train then for trips out to the Wisconsin Dells (overly priced tourist destination) and up to the Green Bay and Appleton area. Having the train stop at the air port is just not a good idea and even if they have to keep the airport stop for a terminal to go to Minnesota then fine leave it there but just add at least one or two more stops near the campus and downtown Madison. For Milwaukee you could even argue for a stop near the airport though there already is an Amtrak stop near the airport already though it is horribly located.

 

It just does not make sense to have the only stop being the airport.

 

It is not that I don't want the rail it is just that the people making the decisions are not thinking about the whole idea here about the rail. There needs to be more stops for it to be something worthwhile and waiting for the Minnesota stop to be made may take 10-20 years. Adding to the tourist destinations in WI would be a smart idea but unfortunately smart and politics never really goes together. If the state really wants to have the rail system there needs to be more stops and there needs to be more thought put into this than there currently has been.

[Polish Falcons]

The difference is that I use--in fact, I need the road system to be well-maintained, reliable, clear of snow, etc. Wisconsin does not need this train. This is nearly a billion dollars coming to the state--and we are spending it on a rail system that runs right next to a highway. The infrastructure in this country is falling apart and we are going to build a train--because it looks good in the short term for politicians. What about the Milwaukee sewer that dumps billions of gallons of raw sewage into Lake Michigan? What about the Asian Carp? What about fixing bridges? What about the budget shortfalls and layoffs at public schools? What about the Milwaukee County Parks system, which is slowly falling into despair? What about doing something to save the manufacturing jobs that are still here? The list goes on and on.

 

Instead, most of the 800 million is going to be spent on steel and iron. Some will go to construction jobs, but those are just temporary. It is almost all for raw materials and construction. How many actual permanent jobs will this create? Even if you try and include the potential economic benefit, you are still talking about a relatively small amount. Yes, they are building the trains here, but the Milwaukee Road used to crank out thousands of trains. We are talking about eight train engines. What would it have cost to save GM in Wisconsin and build thousands of cars here? Certainly not $800 million or even $100 million.

 

Furthermore, this does not change the fact that the roads still need to be maintained with the same amount of money as before. Railroads are not going to replace any roads. For railroads to be anything but a niche attraction for a few wealthy businessmen and tourists, we would have to completely restructure our cities. The suburbs would have to be compacted/removed and the US would have to model itself like Europe, with mostly empty country and the population confined to dense urban areas. It makes much more sense to continue maintaining the highways and work toward zero-emission vehicles powered by green energy and batteries. By the way, there already is a "toll" on all roads in Wisconsin. It is charged by the gallon of gas--$0.513 per gallon, which is good for 8th highest in the nation. So for every 20-25 miles you drive, you pay about 50 cents to maintain the roads. An excise tax is extremely fair in that context, although like the trains, or any other form of transportation, it has to be further subsidized beyond the fares/taxes.

 

I love the idea of public transportation. It is great to be able to get work done while you are commuting, instead of wasting time in traffic. However, our cities are just too spread out for it to work. Even if the train is put in place and connects all of the major cities in the Midwest, it will still require added steps of inconvenience to use for any person that owns a car.

Thank you for pointing out the gas tax. You are right on that and I am happy to realize that this gas tax revenue, along with registration fees, represents a little more than 50% of the State's transportation revenue. I do think that is fair and good policy. I don't however think that this reverses 50 years of transportation policy and funding that have heavily favored and funded roads while allowing mass transit to deteriorate to the pathetic level that creates this deep skepticism about train viability. Before we got to where we are with the roadways a massive scale capital investment was required. In order for transit to stand a chance something comparable needs to be provided; transit advocates are only asking for a miniscule fraction of the public investment that has already been made on roads.

 

Despite the temptation to lump "Europe" into one big category to be disregarded in terms of transportation studies I do think there are examples that could relate to the Midwest. Sweden (and perhaps all of Scandanavia) is a place where the population is not very dense; there are vast stretches of land between cities; they don't have traffic congestion problems, and people are in general very well off financially. If they really wanted to they could just drive. But because a sound transit network is in place and because they find it more convenient a lot of people prefer riding trains and they have a successful transit system.

 

If that is too Euro then you can look to the Pacific Northwest where there are a lot of studies showing that rail lines have in fact increased property values (and not just Seattle/Portland), sparked business development, thereby generating permanent jobs in construction, retail, etc. Also the fact that they have a train helps bring people to the region and attract a talented workforce. This is another region where the population is not incredibly dense, not more so than Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis. Despite the fact that transit initiatives are relatively new in the Northwest they have already shown lots of signs of success.

 

I disagree with the idea of pitting this transportation project up against sensative topics like sewer dumps in Lake Michigan, teacher jobs, or the Milwaukee Parks System. I don't see how they relate. This transit project was initiated by a competitive federal grant that WI won after putting together a solid proposal. If these funds didn't go to Wisconsin they would go to another State transit plan. Since I believe in the project I believe that it has the potential to benefit the State in the long term and therefore will not have a negative impact on something like Asian Carp. While the feds are picking up the capital costs the State will have to pay something like 50%? of operating costs after fare collections. Admittedly I don't have the numbers but I'm thinking that will still represent a rather small fraction of the State's overall transportation cost.

 

I guess it comes down to personal preferance as well some as optimism and a desire to see some fundamental changes in our transportation system. I actually think that it is easier to be a skeptic on this type of project because Wisconsin doesn't really have examples of effective transportation systems. Where I grew up people got made fun of for riding the bus. It will be hard to change people's patterns.

[dadofandrew]

I know little about trains except Amtrak is a huge money loser and suffers from low ridership all over except the Northeast. I wonder how the Cities high speed rail is going, they added it after we left, and lots of people were excited about it.

 

I would not expect it to be profitable, though many might like it as an option, subsidizing something the market can't make work will help some, but everyone will pay for it.

[TracyThom]

I am also curious about the "success" of the Milwaukee-Chicago rail line. It has seen recent popularity increases, but I wonder if that will be the cas3 when the 8-lane I-94 is finished. Most likely, people will choose to drive. I have gone to Chicago many different ways, including the train. I found that the most convenient/cheap is to drive to the northern suburbs, park for free, and take the commuter rail into the city. A group of 4 of us once took the train to Chicago: the total cost was $160! Gas is going to have to cost about $10/gallon to make that a smart decision for a family.

Whenever I go to Chicago, I'll drive to Harvard and take the train. Do you use Metra or Amtrak? Metra is considerably cheaper than Amtrak. One-way during the week will cost you $8.05. On the weekend, it's $5.00 round-trip and kids under 12 are free. Very cheap and you don't have to pay for parking in downtown Chicago or fight the traffic.

[Invader3K]

I've taken the train from Harvard to Chicago, and it's nice...but the key difference is that driving around Chicago is horrible, while driving around Madison or Milwaukee is not that bad at all.

 

And if the train is going to go an average speed under 60 MPH, I really do not see the benefit to ridership at all. It's also disingenuous to call it "high speed rail." They should call it "average speed rail", or "19th century speed rail".

[igor67]

Call me crazy, but if you want the train to make money, put Wi-Fi and a Starbucks in one of the cars. Presto there another 10 minutes of time you save a bunch of people. I think there's a couple of different types of critiques, one is essentially it will never work. The others are more what I'd like to call ideas for improvement. Improvement is certainly possible, but I'd urge some caution in taking in rejected suggestion for improvement and believing then the project will fail. For these kinds of projects the diverse local interests make a lot of these small issues very hard to wrap your head around unless you immerse yourself in planning, so that you can see all of the trade offs.

Random aside I don't see why the faith in roads. Car companies lose money all the time like rail companies.

 

A smartly designed Chicago to Twin Cities rail opens up a whole bunch of new tourist business models along I-94. As someone pointed out the cost to a family is likely to be prohibitive, but the right kind of attractions could draw individuals and couples up from Chicago with the convenience of rail.

[JJHardy7]

It just does not make sense to have the only stop being the airport.

 

I'd guess the major issue is cost. I'm sure Wisconsin could 'chip in' and make destinations to all over Madison, Appleton, Green Bay, but I would imagine that would cost billions of dollars...and IMO it wouldn't make much sense at all. If the Milwaukee to Madison think doesn't make sense, I don't think any other destinations would make sense.

 

I don't have a problem with this at all. Until everything is finalized, I'm not going to get too worried about it. I do think Milwaukee and Madison do make the most logical partners for this. Appleton and Green Bay would be nice, but the cost is way, way, way too much.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

Where does all this money come from. Doyle just keeps putting this state in a deeper hole. We as a state are beyond broke.

[Invader3K]

I see California is getting a train that is electric and can go up to 200 MPH. Why isn't Wisconsin getting something similar?