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The Obama Administration tried to build high speed rail from Chicago to Madison, WI. It was supposed to be the first segment that would eventually extend to the

The Obama Administration tried to build high speed rail from Chicago to Madison, WI. It was supposed to be the first segment that would eventually extend to the twin cities. They have $700M dedicated to it. Then WI had an election for governor, and the incoming Republican (Scott Walker) managed to somehow conflate high speed inter-city rail with 'light rail' and scrapped it. He claimed it was too expensive, since the state would have to spend $7Million or so each year for their part of the maintenance (even though the feds were going to fully fund construction). After Scrapping it, the State then had to pay $90Million to upgrade the tracks between Chicago and Milwaukee (that was going to be paid for) and then had to pay $40M for the high speed Talgo Trains. Plus, Talgo moved their US headquarters from Milwaukee to Chicago.

yellowbkpk 6y ago
Interestingly, it wasn't the Obama administration that tried to build the high speed rail. It was the Republican governor of Wisconsin (Tommy Thompson) that pushed for it. Scott Walker used it as a wedge to split the electorate and win the election. Wisconsin Public Radio did a great podcast about it here: https://www.wpr.org/derailed/wisconsins-high-speed-rail-saga-was-decades-making https://www.wpr.org/derailed/wisconsins-high-speed-rail-saga...
gbronner 6y ago
The route is seriously dumb -- goes straight to Milwaukee and then south, versus going directly through Madison. Badger bus already does MSN-MKE cheaply and quickly, and there's almost no chance that this routing could ever be time-efficient versus the direct route. The route in Madison was supposed to go to Monona Terrace, which is singularly inconvenient for most people, limiting the catchment basin. Getting out of Madison requires huge numbers of grade crossings, limiting speed, and disrupting traffic. So this route was never going to be anything other than a slow drain on the treasury, and SW wisely killed it.
jackschultz 6y ago
We could really need the Milwaukee to Chicago train up to speed. I'm in Milwaukee and would go to a Chicago office twice a week on that train and it just got tough with 1:30 each way. The train is packed too, where on the way back in the evening, people can be standing because not enough seats. Higher speed, like cutting it down to :45 or :50, would mean a ton. The problem is the value of that isn't able to be calculated and in pretty much all infrastructure cases, it gets purely political.

yellowbkpk 6y ago

Interestingly, it wasn't the Obama administration that tried to build the high speed rail. It was the Republican governor of Wisconsin (Tommy Thompson) that pushed for it. Scott Walker used it as a wedge to split the electorate and win the election. Wisconsin Public Radio did a great podcast about it here: https://www.wpr.org/derailed/wisconsins-high-speed-rail-saga-was-decades-making https://www.wpr.org/derailed/wisconsins-high-speed-rail-saga...

gbronner 6y ago

The route is seriously dumb -- goes straight to Milwaukee and then south, versus going directly through Madison. Badger bus already does MSN-MKE cheaply and quickly, and there's almost no chance that this routing could ever be time-efficient versus the direct route. The route in Madison was supposed to go to Monona Terrace, which is singularly inconvenient for most people, limiting the catchment basin. Getting out of Madison requires huge numbers of grade crossings, limiting speed, and disrupting traffic. So this route was never going to be anything other than a slow drain on the treasury, and SW wisely killed it.

jackschultz 6y ago

We could really need the Milwaukee to Chicago train up to speed. I'm in Milwaukee and would go to a Chicago office twice a week on that train and it just got tough with 1:30 each way. The train is packed too, where on the way back in the evening, people can be standing because not enough seats. Higher speed, like cutting it down to :45 or :50, would mean a ton. The problem is the value of that isn't able to be calculated and in pretty much all infrastructure cases, it gets purely political.