Feeling resigned about passenger rail
I recently signed a Facebook petition to the newly elected Republican governor and legislature of Wisconsin to keep the rail line project between Madison and Milwaukee, but I'd be pleasantly amazed if they heed any arguments to change their position. This time last year I read a lot on passenger rail and sometimes used maps and reports found on state government web sites to imagine passenger rail lines going beyond current proposals.


Because Gettysburg might see a huge influx of tourists during the 150th anniversary, I tried to get people there interested in developing a passenger rail option. Along with reducing pressure on area roads, maybe this would attract visitors who can't easily drive to G-burg, such as foreign tourists. With rail passengers arriving within town, restaurants and other business would probably see more customers. Trying to re-enact Lincoln's train ride through Baltimore would be hard, though, since that junction is crowded. So maybe most of the rail passengers would have to go through Harrisburg. However, no one seemed to be working on it. I'd thought about contacting area resident David LeVan, the former head of Conrail, but these days he's focused on his casino proposal and Harley business.

One problem with the news coverage about the WI rail project is that it was mainly framed as a line between Madison and Milwaukee, although the trains were going to go between Madison and Chicago by way of Milwaukee. This project was to be part of improved rail services between the Twin Cities and Chicago to provide an alternative to airplanes. Many airports are already too crowded, and it can be more efficient to shift flights for distances under roughly 500 miles to train. Another aspect of the WI project is that it would have also improved the tracks for freight trains,thus helping business in this state as well as to remove semis from the highways.

An added frustration about the opposition by many Republicans to new passenger rail is that there are arguments on conservative grounds for passenger rail. See, for example, "Passenger Rail: A New Conservative Position" by Alex Kummant and this article on public transit, "What’s so conservative about federal highways?" by William S. Lind. I'd hoped that transportation policy could have been a way to get conservatives to go along with actions that would also have the effect of preventing global warming. [After reading books such as Bill McKibben's Eaarth (not a misspelling)on global warming, I try to keep myself from feeling resigned about that issue. By "Eaarth," McKibben means that we are in the process of creating a new planet different from Earth.] For now, we should at least make sure that some Democrats don't cave in to Walker's push to transfer the train money to WI highways. Some of them do need improvements for safety; however, the little money that has been allocated for passenger rail should stay with passenger rail.