{"id":4602,"date":"2017-08-03T11:58:12","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T16:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/?p=4602"},"modified":"2018-08-20T16:53:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T21:53:19","slug":"passenger-rail-continues-skip-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/passenger-rail-continues-skip-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"Passenger rail continues to skip over Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Awaken your inner four-year-old, readers, because we\u2019re about to talk trains \u2014 specifically, the trains that run between Chicago and St. Paul. Did you know you can take an Amtrak from Chicago to St. Paul, with intermittent stops across Wisconsin? No shit! It\u2019s part of a route that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amtrak.com\/empire-builder-train\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">runs between Chicago and Seattle<\/a>, meaning it only travels the Chicago-St. Paul stretch once a day.<\/p>\n<p>In an effort to boost convenience and shave some time off the trip, the Minnesota Department of Transportation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biztimes.com\/2017\/ideas\/government-politics\/twin-cities-milwaukee-chicago-rail-proposal-moving-forward\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">released a \u201cpurpose and need\u201d statement last week<\/a> for the Twin Cities-Milwaukee-Chicago Intercity Passenger Rail Service \u2014 or TCMC, for those of you who prefer not to spend entire weeks at a time saying the name of something.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.state.mn.us\/passengerrail\/tc-mil-chi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">proposed project<\/a> would add a second, shorter distance train to that pre-existing corridor, one that would run <em>only<\/em> from Chicago to St. Paul, making the same stops across the state as well as two in Milwaukee (downtown and at General Mitchell Airport).<\/p>\n<p>Now, you\u2019re maybe asking yourself, \u201cWhere does Madison fit in?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, it doesn\u2019t \u2014 but it should have. As if you needed any more reasons to be pissed off at Scott Walker, let me break it down for you. Back in 2010, when the Obama administration was hell-bent on growing rail travel in the country, they offered a whopping <a href=\"http:\/\/host.madison.com\/wsj\/news\/local\/govt_and_politics\/wisconsin-to-get-million-for-high-speed-rail\/article_7811d436-0bca-11df-839c-001cc4c002e0.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$810 million federal stimulus grant<\/a> to the state of Wisconsin for the purpose of refurbishing a pre-existing freight rail line between Milwaukee and Madison, effectively extending to us the Amtrak Hiawatha route that runs between Chicago and Milwaukee.<\/p>\n<p>But Walker <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biztimes.com\/2011\/magazines\/biztimes-milwaukee\/past-issues\/high-speed-rail-moves-ahead-without-wisconsin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">turned it down<\/a>, calling the project a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/nation\/article\/0,8599,2028182,00.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">boondoggle<\/a>.\u201d The money <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.jsonline.com\/news\/statepolitics\/111602539.html\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">went to other states<\/a>, the\u00a0line was never fixed up, and Wisconsin stuck with the same rail service it\u2019s always had. So today, had Walker accepted the grant, we could potentially be discussing how to add <em>high-speed<\/em> rail service <em>all over<\/em> the state, rather than talking about adding another conventional-speed train that would continue to skip over the state\u2019s second largest city, capital and flagship university (our nearest Amtrak station is in Columbus).<\/p>\n<p>This is why we can\u2019t have nice things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awaken your inner four-year-old, readers, because we\u2019re about to talk trains \u2014 specifically, the trains that run between Chicago and St. Paul. Did you know you can take an Amtrak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5152],"tags":[2717,2718,62,2476],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v18.3 (Yoast SEO v18.5.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Passenger rail continues to skip over Madison | The Bozho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did you know you can take a train from Chicago to St. Paul with intermittent stops in Wisconsin? It&#039;s part of a route that runs between Chicago and Seattle.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/passenger-rail-continues-skip-madison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Passenger rail continues to skip over Madison\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oh, what might have been.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/passenger-rail-continues-skip-madison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bozho\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/thebozho\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-03T16:58:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-08-20T21:53:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Railroad-fb.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Passenger rail continues to skip over Madison\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Oh, what might have been.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Railroad-tw.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@thebozho\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@thebozho\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tom Whitcomb\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Bozho\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/thebozho\/\",\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/thebozho\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thebozho\"],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/logo.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/logo.png\",\"width\":600,\"height\":280,\"caption\":\"The Bozho\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.thebozho.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Bozho\",\"description\":\"Seeing things. 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