"First, passenger rail is not some pet scheme of socialistic red termite liberals. Midwest Regional, developed by a consortium of nine states, was led by WisDOT under a Republican governor. ProRail, the large, south-central Wisconsin chapter of Wisc. Assoc. of RR Passengers, was founded by Pat Robbins, a lifelong Republican. (In fact, Mr Walker is lucky she's no longer alive, or he would be missing some skin, now.)
Second, the project has nothing to do with Amtrak, beyond the presumption that it would operate the service; but maintenance would be out of Amtrak's hands (and out of Chicago).
Third, Amtrak is in no sense a "failed system", as its growing ridership would suggest (against all odds, such as too-many-cooks meddling by politicians and aging equipment and obstructionism by its landlord railroads). All the criticism I ever see against Amtrak consists of a recycled urban myths, plus almost defiant ignorance of the fact that ALL transportation systems enjoy large public subsidies, Amtrak's being peculiar only because of its size (small) and the annual noisy spectacle of begging for support for it for another year. No such noisy and unedifying wrangling surrounds subsidies for highways, or emerged over the past two fiscal years when the federal "highway trust fund" had to be topped off by $28 billion from the general fund.
Fourth, the "high speed" plans for the MAD–MKE segment were compromised, only for the duration, by an FRA decree a couple of years ago limiting the speeds of trains until Positive Train Control was implemented. That's supposed to happen in 2015 (no one in the industry thinks that's possible). But when and if it did happen, the engineering of the Waterloo Spur and the main line between Watertown and Milwaukee would have been been ready, having been designed for 110 mph operation. Upgrading MKE–CHI for 110 mph passenger was to have been a later phase of the Midwest Regional project.
Fifth, the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative was NOT cooked up by "rail enthusiasts". It was undertaken by nine state departments of transportation—effectively departments of highways under another name—most of which had little or no previous experience in or any particular enthusiasm for passenger rail, the chief exceptions being Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin (marginally), and Missouri.
Sixth, the Midwest Regional plans were essentially complete 1999, except for some ongoing tweaking. All that was needed was funding. That was never easy to see coming, and of course the Bush recession pretty much brought an end to hopes for federal involvement. Finally, after 15 years of planning, environmental studies, etc., FULL funding suddenly appeared, in a complication-free form that no one had anticipated in their wildest dreams.
Seventh, my sense is that the responsible citizens and policy makers who were in favor of this project lost control of the narrative very early on. This was probably because it had not been anticipated that a project that had been favorably and publicly evaluated, and whose need was obvious, over a period of half a generation, would suddenly be the target of a furious (if largely fact-free) assault. For example, the Madison project was mischaracterized as a "train to Milwaukee", whereas it's really multiple trains to and from Chicago. With a stop at Milwaukee (among other places). Even those who knew that there are already trains between MKE and CHI didn't seem to understand that the "train to Milwaukee" was simply an extension of that highly successful service, no one would have to change trains in Milwaukee, etc., etc. (The "future extension" to Chicago that one sometimes saw mentioned in the media coverage had to do with 110 mph operation over the route that would be covered by current 80 mph speeds until the upgrades.)
Eighth, it seemed to me from Walker's first comments on the subject that he had a very limited grasp of the bare facts. He seems to have thought, for instance, that the Madison project was something clapped up by (ugh) liberals trying to make a play for some federal money (so like a liberal). He seemed to think that there was some sort of uncertainty about "where to put the tracks" for the operation, for instance. His recent remark about supporting passenger operations on "existing tracks" suggests that he doesn't know of the existence of the Waterloo Spur between Watertown and Madison. AND as for using the funds for highways, he never somehow mentions that $700 million that Wisconsin got from ARRA funds explicitly for highway construction. And as for the economics, I somehow can't see Walker refusing construction funds for an Interstate highway, or major upgrading of a US highway, on the grounds that Wisconsin will then be stuck with the costs of maintaining it.
I don't actually remember where I saw, recently, among comments on a "Milwaukee train" story, a remark about avoiding the mistakes of "failed high speed passenger train projects". Like so many comments, it gave no specifics, and I'm at a loss to think of any.
Oh, and a final remark. I've several times seen sneering remarks about how the "train to Milwaukee" would be making "all these intermediate stops" (two, to be exact) and so would never be able to attain the promised 110 mph for more than a few miles. Well, the acceleration of a standard trainset like the ones serving the Hiawathas between CHI and MKE is 1.5 mph per second. That's far less than your grandmothers BMW, of course, but you can do the math: it would take all of 75 seconds to go from zero to 110 at that rate.
.. . . . . .
This $8 billion fund was set up for passenger rail projects. States had to apply for it, for specific projects. More than $100 billion in projects were applied for. Wisconsin got the second-largest grant of all, for the Madison project, and appropriately: the proposal rested on long and careful and detailed planning and development, had been studied by two engineering consulting firms, the environmental studies were all out of the way, and the project was not a hastily scraped-together one-off but Phase One of a major, multi-phase nine-state plan that had been developed over a period of 15 years. No one was trying to jam passenger rail money down Wisconsin's throat. Wisconsin went after the funds, and secured them by proposing an uncommonly complete and funding-worthy project.
What Walker proposed is analogous to a kid who gets a full scholarship for college and then wants to know if it would be OK with the college if he just skips school and uses the money to buy himself a Hummer. No, you can't. You asked for the money for a specific purpose, it was never in doubt that the money was being granted for a specific purpose, and if you decide you no longer want to pursue the project, the deal is off. There's nothing that's hard to understand about that. A conspiracy theory, here, like all conspiracy theories, is notably more complicated than the simple truth.
