The railroad company got a lot of federal funding for the station in 2021. But even with rail lines already in place, it could be more than a decade before passenger trains come to Wisconsin’s capital.

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

A new push to bring an Amtrak station to Madison has returned despite passenger rail’s fraught history in the state. 

Even if the new plans come to fruition, it would be years before anyone could board a passenger train in the state’s capital.

The timeline for constructing a Madison station that connects to a Milwaukee route stretches into 2032, according to a study released by the City of Madison last November. The study says the timing is dependent on approvals from multiple agencies as well as continued “funding availability.”

“All of these big transportation projects take six, seven, eight years from the beginning of the plan to completion,” said Tyler Byrnes, a senior researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “Or even in some cases from the beginning of the plan to starting to dig.”

A federal grant from 2023 awarded $500,000 to the state to study a route that expands existing Amtrak service to connect Madison, viewed by Amtrak as underserved, to Milwaukee and Minneapolis. The grant, announced more than two years ago, originated from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by President Joseph Biden in 2021.

The Madison study identified a site along the Monona Lakefront near the Monona Terrace as its No. 1 choice for a rail station. Other ideas include a station near the Madison Public Market, downtown or farther west on UW-Madison’s campus. The route is not expected to operate as high-speed rail initially. Estimates suggest a trip from Madison to Milwaukee would take about one and a half hours.

The state has already completed the first step of a three-step corridor identification program, which was a program created as part of Biden’s infrastructure legislation. The first phase, meant to establish the project’s scope, was completely funded with federal cash. Subsequent phases, if allowed to move forward, would require local matches in addition to federal funding.

This is not the first time the state has tried to expand Amtrak service. In 2010, the federal government awarded Wisconsin about $800 million in stimulus to establish passenger rail in Madison. Former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican elected on the back of the Tea Party movement and widespread conservative discontentment with government, rejected every last penny. A lot of the money went to California, funding a yet incomplete high-speed rail project.

“High-speed rail is an interesting thing because before Walker, it wasn’t really that political of an issue,” said Byrnes. 

Passenger rail, because it requires investment from Washington, has always depended on the political mood of the moment, Byrnes said. But he said he was surprised to see Amtrak become so divisive.  

Using passenger rail, “You could get from Milwaukee to a Badger game and back or from Madison to a Brewer game and back without having to put your beer down,” Byrnes said.

Passenger rail served Madison until 1971. But the state does have three Amtrak routes.

The Hiwatha route connects Chicago and Milwaukee, and, according to the Madison study, is the sixth-busiest route outside the East and West coasts. The Borealis service connects St. Paul and Chicago, and the Empire Builder connects Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. Both the Borealis and Empire Builder routes stop in Columbus, Wisconsin, a city of about 5,500 people that’s about 30 miles northeast of Madison.

Byrnes compared Amtrak to highway projects and pointed to the effort to reconstruct 23 miles of Interstate 41 near Green Bay as an example. This project was formally written into state law in 2019. It’s set to be completed in 2030 and is estimated to cost more than $1 billion.

Rail projects also require years of planning. So the delay isn’t just red tape, he said. You have to identify the optimal routes, design them, make environmental assessments and estimate the impact on the surrounding communities.

But passenger rail does face unique obstacles.

“Portions of that rail line are owned by a private railroad company,” Byrnes said. 

When Congress created Amtrak in 1970, it didn’t give Amtrak the rights to operate on existing rail lines, according to an article from the Berkeley Economic Review. In 1973, after it became apparent that freight companies were causing significant delays to passenger trains, a new federal law provided Amtrak with legal preference to use rail lines. Even so, only the U.S. Department of Justice is allowed to enforce these preference rights, which it has done very rarely. In reality, Amtrak still takes a backseat to freight trains.

If Amtrak came to Madison, it would operate on tracks that already run freight and would rent from railroad companies. 

But highways, not nearly as divisive, also require federal cash, according to James Peoples, an economics professor at UW-Milwaukee. In fact, the federal government has a trust fund for highway development, he said. 

There’s a “pretty steady flow of money coming from the highway trust fund,” Peoples said. “There’s no such fund for rail.” 

Powerful lobbyists have helped policy favor freight companies to the detriment of train schedules. If you want rail, you have to get ready for a fight because the automobile lobby is strong, he said.

It’s not like this in Europe and Asia, he explained. In Europe, high-density cities are close to one another compared to the U.S. In the states, cars became the dominant form of transportation in the 1950s after President Dwight Eisenhower imported Germany’s freeway system to the U.S. American individualism itself became tied to the automobile, and the country became suburban. 

“Geographically, we’re just too big for it to be cost-effective. And that was the difference,” Peoples said. “Our history here has been a history where freight dominated rail.”

In addition to the lack of demand, the costs to rent the tracks and maintain the service means “Amtrak doesn’t make money at all,” Peoples said. 

In Europe, automobiles are physically smaller and gas prices are high. Those nations broadly disincentivise traveling by car, whereas the U.S. has some of the lowest fuel prices in the world. 

For light-rail, like what operates within a city, you could recover the costs if you can convince Americans that it would reduce congestion. 

For long-distance travel, Americans usually opt to drive or fly. Whereas in some European countries, governments have pulled subsidies for “short-haul flights” between countries, according to the Berkeley Economic Review.  

But cost includes more than just gas prices, Peoples said. Consumers also need to consider externalities like the cost of waiting in traffic, air pollution and lost time. 

“If you include that in the equation, then it makes sense to have light rail in high-density areas,” Peoples said. “That is a tough sale in the U.S.”

Investing in rail would also create jobs, Peoples said. The rates of car crashes also fall. 

But who’s in the statehouse, the White House and Congress is important. While Biden supported Amtrak and high-speed rail, President Donald Trump’s administration has sought cuts to high-speed rail. But midterms could bring a blue tide that could strengthen the effort. 

“Two years later, it may change again,” Peoples said.

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin.