Sounding a train warning (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Posted: March 25, 2010

The high-speed train from Milwaukee to Madison is, from the taxpayer's point of view, lose, lose, lose. The taxpayers lose in the huge construction costs, the huge ongoing costs and, if "successful," the costs of hurting the competing bus companies - they pay taxes.

The claim that the rail line will benefit taxpayers in creating significant development sounds like fantasy, based on nothing. Have you been around the Amtrak station?

This train will cost a fortune, and we simply don't need it. If anyone proposed a mass transit train from Rice Lake to Rhinelander, you'd probably look at them like their eyes were working independently.

On the other extreme, if the mayor of New York proposed getting rid of the subway, same reaction, different reason.

Rice Lake doesn't need passenger trains. New York does.

So, a good question is whether the Milwaukee to Madison run is more like the Rice Lake run or Manhattan to Queens. This is an incredibly easy call.

Most everyone can get from Rice Lake to Rhinelander with no problem. Most everyone will run into horrible traffic and parking problems in Times Square. Most everyone has better options to get from Milwaukee to the outskirts of Madison, as though anyone wants to go from Milwaukee to the outskirts of Madison, than a train - very hard to find someone with a worse option.

Maybe if you live near the train line and work at the Madison airport (the end of the line), then maybe you'd take it. That's a very big maybe at about $55 round trip. If you did that 250 days a year, that's almost $14,000. You can buy a good car for five.

When it's easy to base policy on most everyone, we should.

Now here's a little friendly advice to my opposition - mostly people who have never met an expansion of government they didn't like, the ones who would be for the Rice Lake Express.

I submit to them this: Be more judicious in your public spending, even though it doesn't come naturally. Believe it or not, there's only so much to go around. Don't waste a fortune in public money on this. You can waste money in so many better ways - from your perspective - hidden boondoggles, expanding entitlements.

This will be a very high-profile monument to boondoggles. It may as well have a big picture of Tom Barrett on it with its subsidy next to it. Now how is that going to help you big spenders when you propose future big spending? It may be fast, but no so fast that we won't see it . . . empty.

And speaking of possible future governors, Scott Walker is vowing to try kill this train even if construction has begun, and he's leading in the polls.

The ridership is projected to be 370,000 per year. I'd love the folks making that projection to be my regular betting buddies. But even at that, it will be the thief that keeps on taking - millions per year, and I'm not talking passengers.

I submit that the ridership will be closer to 370. Just think of the subsidy if I'm right.

I want to be loud in my warning: No one will be on this train. What on Earth is the profile of the typical rider? Who wants to go to the Madison airport, eight miles out of town? Legislators? I'd have to see that. Students? Commuters? Most people are thinking, "Madison has an airport?"

Come on, there are white elephants, and then there are white elephants. This will be the Petticoat Junction with WiFi. And this white elephant will get attention like a herd of white elephants trumpeting "I told you so," stampeding 10 times a day.

Gary Kraeger is a real estate appraiser in Wind Lake and a former community columnist.

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