3 posts tagged “milwaukee”

Federal economic stimulus money could be used to build a Midwestern high-speed passenger rail system that would link Chicago to Minneapolis with stops at Milwaukee, Madison and even Green Bay, Gov. Jim Doyle told Milwaukee business leaders today.

Doyle made the comments while laying out to the Greater Milwaukee Committee some of his priorities for the billions in federal money likely to be approved by Congress to help revive the struggling economy. He said that the economic crisis presented an "opportunity to do some things that we've dreamed about doing for years." A Midwest high-speed train system is one such project, he said.

"Imagine a high-speed train from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to the Twin Cities, with a spur that goes to Green Bay, and that connects up with other major population centers in the Midwest. We've sat around and talked about this for decades. But now we may well have the opportunity, somewhat depending on how this federal legislation is structured, to be able to make that kind of big-time investment," Doyle said.

Asked in an interview after the meeting whether there was evidence enough travelers would use such a system, Doyle said he believes they will if it's designed to save them the time and hassle of existing forms of transportation.

"If you could get from the Twin Cities to Chicago in equal the time it takes you to go to the airports and fight through everything and you can end up in downtown Twin Cities or downtown Chicago and it's on a good, new high-speed comfortable train, then I think you're going to see a lot of demand for it - particularly as it comes through Madison and Milwaukee," Doyle said.

Doyle said he hoped such a system could be profitable, but said it might require government subsidies to operate.

"Just as we heavily subsidize our road transportation system," Doyle said. "We subsidize heavily our air transportation system. I don't think people should say rail is somehow not subject to subsidy when the others are."