eolesen
Veteran
- Jul 23, 2003
- 15,940
- 9,370
Uh, it's called geography. Again, the CHI-MKE-MSP corridor doesn't go thru MSN:NewHampshire Black Bears said:
The grand plan was to reroute the MSP corridor to go via MSN, and that would have added about 20-30 minutes to the MKE-MSN segment, even at higher speeds, and would have cut Columbus from the rail network entirely. It's also questionable how the additional time would have hurt business on the MKE-MSP segment.
Madison to Milwaukee already has rail between them, and hasn't been able to support service since the mid 1950's. Before then, there were several trips a day on two different railroads. The Milwaukee Road kept a single trip per day in place up until Amtrak's startup in 1971.
The state has had over 40 years to start up commuter rail between the two cities, but never could make a business case for it.
And then, BAM! The business case for HSR was created, containing more fantasy than most Democrat proposals: when Doyle went after Obamafunds, they were estimating almost 2400 riders per day between MKE & MSN, including thru-riders to MSP, and six round trips (going up to 10 round trips).
Put otherwise, Doyle's fantasy train was expecting to equal the ridership on the Hiawatha Service between CHI & MKE, which has grown over a 40 year period.
Do the math and tell me with a straight face that a college town is going to generate the same number of travelers as there are between CHI and MKE...
Then, consider that the routing they were proposing was 15 miles longer than driving difference (90 vs. 75 miles). 67% of the projected traffic was going to come from drivers choosing the train. That's tree-hugger fantasy math at its best...
Call Scott Walker what you will for his stance on collective bargaining, but ditching the Talgos and giving back the $810M in funding was the smartest move he could make.
Had Wisconsin gone forward, they would have still been on the hook for a minimum of $7.5M per year in operating subsidies. The brunt of that money would have gone to (possibly non-union) workers at Talgo, who would have done all the maintenance on those trainsets. Talgo doesn't trust Amtrak to maintain their trains, and that's the same deal in Oregon and Washington from what I'm told. The operating subsidies could have been even higher if ridership didn't materialize.
Walker tried to have those funds applied towards upgrading CHI-MKE, but DOT refused. In the end, turning down the Federal moneywas the right thing to do. The state didn't have the money to subsidize a fantasy. It's almost as bad as the disaster called California HSR. That, too, will hopefully die before the first shovel of dirt is turned.
Lest anyone think that I'm against passenger rail...
On the map above, look closer at the MKE-GRB corridor. There's been a longer standing business case for two or three trains a day on that route.
So, why does that one make sense?... Notice all the other population centers along the corridor? Those are the characteristics of a growth corridor: slightly dispersed cities with decent populations, and a greater likelihood of generating traffic across a longer length of haul. MKE-MSN had suburbs between them.
WDOT has said they might be able to do something to GRB between 2019 and 2030. Seems to me there's far more justification for that routing than there ever was for the pork-barrel boondoggle to try and put HSR in place between MKE and MSN.
