Amtrak station in Madison
MADISON, Wis. — Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway — in her 2024 budget request — is proposing an increase in local funding ($350,000 to $400,000) to help establish the need for an Amtrak station in Madison. In addition to covering the costs for programming and planning, the funds would go towards the city’s required local match for participating in a federal passenger rail corridor identification program.
Rhodes-Conway is looking to obtain a percentage of the more than $60 billion outlined in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal from Congress in 2021 to upgrade and expand the public transit system, according to a Wisconsin Public Radio story.
Amtrak has never served the Wisconsin capital with direct rail service, only with Thruway buses to Chicago and a connection to the Empire Builder at Columbus, Wis. Milwaukee Road passenger trains from Chicago were not retained when Amtrak began operating on May 1, 1971.
Efforts to extend Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawathas to Madison ended in 2012 when Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker turned back $810 million of federal economic stimulus funds and canceled the state’s purchase of Talgo Series 8 trainsets. The money would have rehabilitated a former Milwaukee Road branch line between Madison and Watertown, Wis., and upgrade Canadian Pacific’s main line into Milwaukee
In 2021, Amtrak released a 15-year plan to expand the existing Hiawatha route connecting Chicago and Milwaukee to include Madison. According to the plan, the Madison Hiawatha Extension would provide “Dane County residents, businesses, and visitors with increased mobility options between the state’s capital and its largest city, as well as service to Chicago.” Amtrak also suggests trips could be added to connecting Madison to Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The city could move forward in the planning phase without state funding, says Madison Transportation Director Tom Lynch in a WPR interview. “There will come a time, you know, [in] several years where we get into the design, final design and construction, and there will need to identify partners and ways to accomplish a local match.” So other funding sources are key. The overall time stamp on a project of this magnitude is not clear, nor is the final cost. Lynch estimates 6 to 8 years for a plan to come to fruition.
“The bipartisan infrastructure law has provided more money for passenger rail than at any time in decades, and so this is a good time to be pursuing some of that,” Lynch says. “It’s been 50 years since we’ve had passenger rail. We’d like to bring it back to Madison.”
In 2022, Madison’s Common Council invested $120,000 in a passenger rail station study to decide on possible locations for an Amtrak station. The report should be released this fall. The Common Council will vote on the capital budget and 2024 operating budget in November. Therefore, the quest to establish service is decades long and looks like it will continue for years to come.
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