APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — With sky high gas prices, the conversation of bringing a passenger rail train between Green Bay and Milwaukee is becoming more relevant.
Amtrak provided an update Saturday to the Wisconsin Association of Railroad Passengers (WisARP), a group in that has been advocating for this project.
It’s been more than 50 years since regular passenger rail service has run to Green Bay and the Fox Cities. If you want to bring those type of trains back to the area, the time to say so is now, according to WisARP and other community leaders.
“Right now it’s really about saying we’re interested in this conversation,” said Jake Woodford, Appleton’s mayor.
Woodford spoke to members of WisARP in downtown Appleton Saturday morning.
The association’s meeting focused on Amtrak’s desire to bring passenger rail between Green Bay and Milwaukee with stops in Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, and Appleton.
“Effective, efficient, reliable mass transportation can help relieve some of that burden on our infrastructure,” said Woodford.
Tracks with capability for max speeds of 79 miles per hour already exist between Milwaukee and Neenah, according to WisARP members. Signals need to be upgraded to reach that speed on the tracks to Green Bay.
Derrick James, Amtrak Director of Government Affairs for the Midwest, says the federal government will start gauging interest in May to see which areas of the country want to help make the investment in new passenger rail corridors.
“Transit sometimes requires operating support, but it ends up churning those dollars back into the local economy and brings back way more than it’s costing the taxpayers,” said James.
It’s unclear how much the project would cost, but there is rare opportunity with $66 billion earmarked for rail and Amtrak in the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Access to that money will likely require a matching investment from state and local governments, according to James.
“We would like Wisconsin to partner with us and say yes, let’s add these corridors in Wisconsin to that national map that the feds are putting together,” said James.
It’s expected to be at least a year before the feds decide who can apply for the money. After planning and environmental studies, James says it typically takes another 6 to 10 years to get a corridor operational.
Amtrak says the train ride from Green Bay to Milwaukee would take about 2 hours and 50 minutes. According to Google, taking a car is more than an hour faster, at 1 hour and 45 minutes.
