Madison Should Ride 'em in on a Rail: It's High Time for High-Speed Passenger Trains

It is high time we brought high-speed passenger rail to Madison. Rail travel has been a key to the growth of commerce and tourism in Madison over her 150 years, a perpetual destination and link in our region's and our nation's passenger rail systems.

High-speed passenger rail will spur tourism and convention growth. With this influx will come increased retail, hospitality and dining spending, and a general boon to commerce. It may be our single greatest opportunity for tourism growth

High-speed passenger rail will bring improved road and rail safety to communities along upgraded rail corridors. It will be comfortable, affordable, and productive. It will change our lives for the better.

High-speed rail will make dollars for the region simply because it makes sense. Efficiencies in commerce, transportation, and land-use will grow Madison, Dane County and surrounding communities for decades to come. Such an operation could easily integrate with a local light rail system to connect our bedroom communities like streetcars and the inter-urban of times gone by.

Railroads are cheaper, more compact and more efficient than highways. Rails require 10% of the land that is required for Interstate highways. The cost to lay rail is half that of laying highways and rail can support 3-5 times more capacity than roads. Upgrading track is 6 to 7 times cheaper than highway construction. Plus, tracks are less expensive to maintain than roads.

Our highways are clogged and unpredictable. This is not good for business or business people. Trains can carry volumes of people and product and are not bogged down as they travel on dedicated tracks. But, passenger rail has yet to enter the frame of reference in business planning. The Collaboration Council, Madison's nascent regional development corporation may help. They understand that economy and commerce know no municipal boundary. They would be wise to endorse and advocate for high-speed passenger rail service to Madison, bringing it to the collective conscience of our business community.

Twenty years ago, few would have predicted our own Beltline's congestion. If we want to avoid crushing traffic problems in Madison's morrow we must invest in rail today. We need to be more forward thinking and take off the blinders that have confined our economy to a thin view of road-only transportation. To plan for tomorrow, we must support passenger rail. To ignore passenger rail in Madison is to doom our city to almost constant traffic failures and impassable roadways that will stunt our potential and our future growth.

We must have public investment in a balanced transportation system, with publicly funded rail lines for to create the opportunity that Madison, Dane County, Wisconsin, and America will need in the next few decades. The cost to get a regional high-speed rail system and a local light rail network up and running is a paltry half of the $1 billion that annually goes just to highways in Wisconsin alone. In Illinois, Metra is funded through dedicated sales and gas taxes. A similar program could work here in Wisconsin.

The benefits of regional high-speed passenger rail are so huge that Madison, her people and her business community must get in front of the curve and get behind the concept of multiple high-speed passenger trains going to and from our city each day. We must communicate this to our state and federal elected officials, and if they won't fund the programs, we must replace them with those who will.

We must get passenger rail service to Madison, multiple trains each day. Then we can figure out the details. We have totally missed the big picture spending our time and energy on tiny details like fencing and garbage cleanup without focusing on getting the train here in the first place.

So get on board! Contact your state and federally officials and demand that they fund high-speed passenger rail. Call, write, or send an e-mail. Regardless of how you do it, if you want to see passenger rail travel in Madison in your lifetime, act now.