Republicans fight Wisconsin high-speed rail

A brick-and-glass state office building on the banks of Lake Monona, just a few blocks from the Wisconsin Capitol and the rest of downtown Madison, shows no outward sign that it has become the focal point of one of the most heated - and unexpected - debates to divide this state's Democrats and Republicans in a crucial election year, the Stateline reports.

The controversy is over
what the building could become: one of the first new station stops on a high-speed
rail network paid for primarily with federal dollars. Wisconsin won big in a
national competition to get the high-speed rail stimulus money, and the issue
historically has attracted bipartisan support here. Proponents say the new rail
service will spur development and link Midwestern cities more tightly together.

But many Wisconsin
Republicans this year are denouncing the new trains, using the project as a
symbol to show how Democratic leaders in both state and federal government are
spending money that neither can afford. "More than anything," says Scott
Walker, the Milwaukee County executive and Republican candidate for governor, "it
symbolizes what people think of here when they think of runaway government
spending."

Both Walker and Mark
Neumann, a former congressman who faces Walker in Tuesday’s (Sept. 14)
Republican primary, want the state to stop work on the project. Walker launched
his own website called NoTrain.com, calling for using the money to fill other
transportation needs. Neumann doesn’t want it used for transportation at all;
he wants the money for tax breaks, although it’s not clear how viable either
option is.

Rail proponents are not
backing down. Last week, President Obama visited Milwaukee to preview his plans
to improve the nation’s transportation infrastructure, specifically mentioning
high-speed rail. His transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in a recent
visit that "nobody can stop this train." And Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who
is running to keep the governor’s mansion in Democratic hands, is firmly behind
extending high-speed rail to Madison.

Wisconsin won big in the
sweepstakes to secure money for high-speed rail. Although 40 states applied for
stimulus funds for faster trains, only Wisconsin got everything it asked for: more
than $810 million to start sending trains between Milwaukee and Madison, the
state’s two biggest cities.

Some state-owned stretches
of the route currently have a single track that is so old that freight trains
can travel only up to 10 mph on it. The infusion of federal cash would upgrade
the route from Milwaukee to Madison so the whole distance would have at least
two sets of tracks, and trains could travel up to 79 mph initially and, by
2016, 110 mph. It’s a far cry from the speeds envisioned for trains in
California and Florida, which would top 220 mph and 150 mph, respectively. But
the benefit of the Midwestern approach is that the trains would come online
quickly; planners say the first ones would arrive in Madison in the spring of
2013.

If and when passengers
start using it, the Madison site would look quite different than it does today.
A single track now winds, largely hidden from view, near a lakeside
thoroughfare past the state office building. But planners envision a double
track that would accommodate both freight and passenger rail. On the lakeside
wall of the administrative building, the new platform would be topped with a
four-story curved roof to complement the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed conference
center next door. Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants to go a step further.
Where a run-down parking garage now stands across the street, the mayor wants
an underground garage covered with a city-owned market.

The station would
eventually be just one stop in a much larger Midwestern network. Right from the
start, Madison passengers would be able to take the train through Milwaukee to
Chicago. Eventually, the route would be extended to the Twin Cities in
Minnesota. Passengers could catch trains in Chicago to stops stretching from
Kansas City to Cleveland.

Wisconsin has long pushed
for the regional network. Democrats defending the project today unfailingly
mention that it was Tommy Thompson, a four-term Republican governor, who first
promoted the idea here. The incumbent governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, put a
spotlight on the issue during his two terms, traveling to Spain to ride on the
country’s recently built bullet trains and convincing a Spanish train
manufacturer to build an assembly plant in Wisconsin.

The Doyle administration is
moving full speed ahead to complete the route, even as Republican critics call
for work to halt. State officials say they plan to have roughly $300 million of
the $810 million project under contract by January, when the next governor will
take over. Those contracts include design work, construction of bridges and the
purchase of construction materials such as steel and railroad ties.

Walker, the Milwaukee
County executive, says the state can still pull the plug on the project in
January. He wants to cancel contracts before money has been spent on them. Many
of the firms that would help build the rail line already do business with the
state on highway and road projects, so they’d have plenty of reasons to
cooperate with the state, he says.

Walker argues that the
state is overestimating the number of people who will take the train, which
would leave state taxpayers on the hook for more than the $6 million to $7
million the state says will be required annually for ongoing maintenance and
support. Residents of the Milwaukee area can get to Madison cheaper and faster
by taking a car than by riding the train, the candidate argues.

That’s the key difference,
Walker says, between the Milwaukee-to-Madison route and the popular Hiawatha
line that runs from Milwaukee to Chicago already. People are willing to take
the Hiawatha because it can save them time in traffic or money for parking.
More than 740,000 riders took it in 2009, a 50-percent increase from seven
years earlier. Walker supports state subsidies for the existing route, but not
for its extension to Madison. He points out that an Amtrak train already runs
from Chicago to the Twin Cities, even though it bypasses Madison.

Cari Anne Renlund, of the
Wisconsin Department of Transportation, says Walker is missing the point. "This
is not commuter rail; this is intercity rail," she says. "This is to connect
the folks in Madison with people in St. Louis." Because it is an intercity
system, Renlund says it’s more appropriate to compare train ridership numbers
with that of airports. She says when the Madison train comes online in 2013,
more people will use it in a year than will use the Madison and Green Bay
airports combined.

Both Republican candidates
for governor object to the ongoing subsidies the state would have to pay to
keep the new trains running. But Redlund says the state’s current subsidy for
rail is minuscule compared to roads. Right now, she says, the state pays $1.38
per Wisconsin resident on rail, compared to $360 per person on bridges,
highways and roads.

More importantly, Renlund
argues, "This is a jobs initiative. We are going to have thousands of people
working on this. Efforts to kill the project are, in effect, efforts to kill
those jobs." The state estimates that extending the route to Madison will
create 5,500 jobs at the peak of construction in 2012. Walker, though,
dismisses those estimates and claims that only 55 full-time permanent railroad
jobs are expected to be created by the expansion.

One of the stickiest
issues, though, is what would happen to the federal money Wisconsin already has
spent on high-speed rail if the next governor cancels the project. Walker says
he would like for the state to be able to use the money for other
transportation projects, even if that requires a change of law by Congress. He
says Wisconsin previously has spent money originally designated for rail in
order to improve highways.

But the state’s agreement
with the federal government on the current stimulus program specifies that
Wisconsin would have to pay back the money it receives if the state stops
high-speed rail service in the next 20 years. A spokesman for Barrett, the
Milwaukee mayor and presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, says Wisconsin
would end up wasting millions of dollars to cancel the contracts without receiving
any of the benefits.

If Wisconsin’s money did
return to the federal government, other states would want it. This fall, 25 of
them applied to the federal government for help with 77 different projects. The
requests totaled more than $8.5 billion, but this year, the federal government
only has $2.3 billion available.