By Larry Sandler
For WisBusiness.com
Two passenger rail ideas once left for dead — a Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line and an Amtrak route from Milwaukee to Madison — are back on the study track.
Should these and other proposals come to fruition, passenger trains could one day link eight of Wisconsin’s 10 largest cities to each other, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Milwaukee is now the only one of those top 10 cities with Amtrak service.
Advocates say the proposed routes could stimulate investment and help workers reach jobs. If the southeastern Wisconsin commuter line dubbed KRM was established, “some of the poorest neighborhoods in this region would be connected to over 400,000 jobs within 45 minutes of public transit,” says Trevor Jung, Racine’s transit and mobility director. “That would be life-altering.”
Passenger rail also offers a solid return on investment by helping mid-sized cities like Eau Claire become more competitive, says Scott Rogers, chair of the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition and vice president of the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce. And rail travel between mid-sized cities, like those in the Fox Valley, could ultimately have a “more meaningful impact” than passengers riding all the way to Chicago or Milwaukee, Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich has said.
But some of the proposals would have to overcome political opposition. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, successfully led efforts to kill the previous KRM commuter rail study. Republican opposition also doomed an earlier plan for fast trains between Milwaukee and Madison, and Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, have vowed to oppose state cash for that route.
In the 2023-’25 state budget, the GOP-led Legislature approved funding for upgrading current service to Chicago and the Twin Cities, but not for Wisconsin’s share of a proposed Minneapolis-to-Duluth route that would stop in Superior.
By contrast, Congress included $66 billion for passenger rail nationwide in the recent Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Some of that money is now funding an array of $500,000 “corridor identification” grants to study new or improved routes.
Four of those grants recently went to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and three went to other agencies seeking routes through this state. WisDOT studies would look at adding new service to Madison, Eau Claire, Green Bay and other Fox River Valley cities, as well as expanded service to Chicago and the Twin Cities.
Separately, Dem U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin helped Racine obtain a $5 million earmark in the 2022-’23 transportation appropriations bill to revive the KRM study.
KRM rises again
Racine plans to lead the study jointly with Milwaukee, Kenosha and WisDOT, with staff support from the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. Milwaukee has agreed to participate. Jung says Kenosha could join soon, although a Kenosha spokesperson didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
Starting in 2009, a state-created three-county regional transit authority planned a Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter rail line that would have been funded by a rental car tax. Passengers would have been able to transfer to Chicago’s Metra trains at the existing Kenosha station. But after Republicans took over Wisconsin’s state government in 2011, they abolished all regional transit authorities.
Figuring out another governance and funding structure will be part of the new study’s mission. Commuter rail lines are typically run by regional or state agencies that collect sales taxes or other taxes to supplement fare revenue. But Racine’s requests for consultant qualifications and proposals call for studying transit-oriented development around stations.
That’s a major revenue source for Brightline, the only private intercity passenger railroad currently operating in the United States. Brightline, founded by Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Wes Edens, runs high-speed service between Miami and Orlando and is studying a second route between Las Vegas and Southern California.
A local company, Wisconsin Transit & Realty Group, also sought to leverage transit-oriented development in its bid to resurrect the KRM. In 2022, WisDOT applied for federal funds on WTRG’s behalf, with the understanding that no state or local tax dollars would be involved, but withdrew the application later that year. WTRG Executive Vice President Michael Garven says his company advanced further in the federal process than any other private company had, but was forced to pull out after the Russian invasion of Ukraine negatively affected the fortunes of a foreign investor.
“WTRG is still in discussions with private investors,” Garven says. But he didn’t respond to a follow-up question about how the new study would affect his company’s plans.
Despite the failure of the previous efforts, Racine has remained interested in commuter rail, as the largest Midwestern city that isn’t on an interstate highway, Jung said in an interview.
Amtrak service could grow
While the commuter rail line would be new, the Amtrak routes that WisDOT is studying would build on Wisconsin’s current intercity trains: the Chicago-to-Milwaukee Hiawatha line, and the long-distance Empire Builder. With 2022 ridership of 540,000 passengers on seven daily round trips, the Hiawatha is Amtrak’s most frequent and most heavily used route outside the Northeast and the West Coast, regularly posting one of the nation’s best on-time records. The Empire Builder runs one round trip daily between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest, with stops that include Milwaukee and St. Paul.
Plans are already under way to convert one Hiawatha round trip to the new Great River line, extending it along the Empire Builder route to provide a second daily train to St. Paul. In addition to Milwaukee, the Great River would serve all of the Empire Builder’s Wisconsin stops — Columbus, Portage, Wisconsin Dells, Tomah and La Crosse — as well as the Hiawatha stops at Sturtevant and Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.
The Great River was originally expected to start service in late 2023, but that has been pushed back to sometime in 2024. A 2021 WisDOT presentation indicated it would extend what is now northbound Hiawatha Train 333, by leaving Milwaukee at 12:39 p.m. and arriving in St. Paul at 6:16 p.m., and southbound Hiawatha Train 340, by leaving St. Paul at 11:47 a.m. and arriving in Milwaukee at 5:40 p.m.
One of the $500,000 grants would go to the Great River, which is already funded for $53.3 million in capital costs. A WisDOT spokesman declined to clarify whether the grant would be used to complete planning for the new train or to study additional trips on the same route.
Routes to Madison and Green Bay also would be designed as Hiawatha extensions, connecting those cities to both Milwaukee and Chicago.
That was the plan for the previous Milwaukee-to-Madison route, first championed by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson. Under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, the federal government awarded the state $810 million in 2010 to cover the full capital cost of expanding the Hiawatha to eight round trips and extending six of those trips to Madison, at a top speed of 110 mph. Long-range plans called for eventually extending that route to the Twin Cities.
But Republican Scott Walker campaigned against the train in that year’s gubernatorial election. After he won and said he planned to spend the federal money on roads, the U.S. Department of Transportation yanked the grant and redistributed the cash to other states for their rail projects. With that money went funding for upgrading Hiawatha stations, tracks and trains. Wisconsin has continued the Hiawatha work piecemeal, with a mix of state and federal dollars, but it could go on past 2025.
All of the new WisDOT studies are looking at service at the current top speed of 79 mph.
One would spend up to $500,000 for a preliminary look at extending some Hiawatha trips to Madison, Eau Claire and the Twin Cities. Both the state’s long-range rail plan and Amtrak’s vision call for intermediate stops in Watertown and Waukesha County. Amtrak specified Oconomowoc, but Pewaukee City Mayor Steve Bierce has advocated for a stop in his community. Meanwhile, Madison is studying six possible sites for a new station, including downtown,the UW-Madison campus and the Dane County Regional Airport.
Another $500,000 grant would fund study of a Hiawatha extension to Green Bay. Both Amtrak’s vision and the state rail plan indicate Appleton, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac could be intermediate stops. Neither mentions additional Milwaukee-area stops in its text, but a map in the state plan shows stations at West Bend and Milwaukee’s northwest side. Fox Valley rail supporters also have advocated for a stop at American Family Field, which would be on the way to Madison as well as Green Bay.
Extending the Hiawatha to both Madison and Green Bay could require an increase to 10 round trips daily. Adding more Hiawatha service would be the focus of the other $500,000 WisDOT study. However, Illinois track upgrades needed for the increased service have been stymied by opposition in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs.
If all those proposed routes eventually were created, trains would connect Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, Racine, Appleton, Eau Claire and Oshkosh, as well as 12th-ranked La Crosse and 15th-ranked Fond du Lac, leaving Waukesha and Janesville as the largest Wisconsin cities without passenger rail.
Additional routes considered
Among the other routes under study are:
• Eau Claire to Twin Cities: Eau Claire County won a $500,000 grant for the Chippewa-St. Croix Passenger Rail Commission to study a rail route from Eau Claire to Minneapolis-St. Paul. The line could be run by one of the private companies that now contract with local authorities to operate commuter rail and urban transit lines, such as Milwaukee’s streetcar, Eau Claire’s Rogers says. Additional Wisconsin stops could include Altoona, Menomonie, Baldwin and Hudson.
• Minneapolis to Duluth: Minnesota received a $500,000 grant to plan the Northern Lights Express, which would run at 90 mph from the Minneapolis Target Field station — now used only for light rail and commuter trains — to Duluth, stopping en route in Superior. The Minnesota Legislature has appropriated $194.7 million for the $592.3 million project, with federal funds expected to cover most of the rest. Wisconsin lawmakers rejected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ request for $2.2 million to pay this state’s share, but they didn’t rule out eventual capital funding for the proposed Amtrak line.
• Chicago to Pacific Northwest: Montana’s Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority landed a $500,000 grant to study reviving the North Coast Hiawatha, a long-distance Amtrak route discontinued in 1979. This route (which would be renamed to avoid confusion with the current Chicago-Milwaukee line) would parallel the Empire Builder, linking Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul to Seattle and Portland, but on a more southerly course through the largest cities of Montana and North Dakota. In Wisconsin, the line could follow either the Empire Builder route through La Crosse or the proposed route through Madison and Eau Claire — or both, if it ran two round trips daily, says Dan Bucks, the authority’s development chair.
Based on the state rail plan, advocates believe all of those routes could coexist and complement each other, by offering multiple options and frequent service that could attract more riders, Bucks and Rogers say.
