Conservatively Speaking

TIME focuses on fading fast trains

Posted by Mary Lazich on Oct. 29, 2010

TIME.com has posted an article explaining why the approved half fast train between Milwaukee and Madison is becoming a losing issue.

Michael Grunwald writes in High-Speed Rail Goes Off the Tracks in Wisconsin that such projects are not political or public darlings:

“High-speed rail was once a bipartisan dream, but ever since it was included in Obama's controversial $787 billion stimulus bill, it's become another hyperpartisan issue in a hyperpartisan climate. Republican candidates for governor in California, Florida and Ohio, three of the other big winners in the rail-funding sweepstakes, are also talking about stopping trains and giving the government its money back.

(Republican Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott) Walker says the federally financed (Milwaukee - Madison) line is too expensive for debt-ridden Wisconsin, because the state would have to pay about $8 million a year to maintain it. The Milwaukee-Madison trains would have a top speed of 110 m.p.h. (180 km/h), a far cry from the 220-m.p.h. (350 km/h) bullet trains zipping around Europe and Asia; initially, they'd average less than 60 m.p.h. (100 km/h), which wouldn't be a particularly attractive alternative to the modest intercity drive. And the rail line itself would create only a few permanent jobs. One recent poll found that Wisconsin residents opposed the new line by 55 to 41.”

Grunwald concludes, “Like other long-term Obama priorities slipped into the stimulus - clean energy, electronic medicine, the Race to the Top education reforms - it's a legacy program, an effort to use government to create something of enduring value. These days, that's not an issue that anyone can run on.”

Read the entire article here.