Wisconsin Department of Transportation
An artists' rendering of a Madison train station.
When high-speed rail seemed headed to Madison more than 10 years ago, conceptual plans were drawn up for a train station below the Department of Administration building on East Wilson Street.
The really good ones never die.
Madison has been talking about a return to passenger rail service for about three decades. We came oh so close in 2010, when $810 million in federal money was earmarked for a Madison to Milwaukee line. Then Scott Walker got elected governor and turned the money away. And the heck of it is, that wasn’t the worst thing he did.
But let’s move on. We’ve got another chance. In the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last year, Congress appropriated $102 billion for rail improvements and Madison was included on a conceptual map of line expansions put out by the feds.
Okay. So right here let me just say three things. Charlie Brown. Football. Lucy.
Nonetheless, you have to like our chances of getting one percent of $102 billion. So, it’s time to dream again and part of the dream is to dust off plans for a Madison train station.
We went down this track before over a decade ago and the half dozen areas the city is looking at in what its planner describes as a “quick-hitter of a process" were all pretty well vetted back then. Generally speaking, there are two sites on the East Side, two on the North Side, one on campus and one downtown. (And by the way, any planner who promises a “quick-hitter of a process” in Madison is new to town, optimistic beyond reason, or ahead of the curve when it comes to the legalization of recreational drugs in Wisconsin.)
While we’ve been through this before, it’s worth going through the exercise again. There has been a lot of development near all of the potential sites and a major redevelopment is planned around one of them — the old Oscar Mayer plant. At that site the city could move its north transfer point and develop it into an intermodal hub. Also, it’s not too far from the airport, which would be another plus.
Still, I like downtown. Back in 2010 I pushed for a location below the DOA building on East Wilson Street and, in fact, conceptual plans were drawn up for a station there. My view was, and still is, that a train should come downtown because that’s where most people want to be. Oscar Mayer encompasses a nice residential neighborhood and the redevelopment plans are great, but it’s not a destination in itself. That intermodal hub will be needed because just about everyone will be headed someplace else in the city.
But when you emerge from the DOA building you’re two blocks from the Capitol, which not insignificantly, will be one of the first things you see. If you’ve got business with the state, most of state government is steps away. The Monona Terrace Convention Center, which could very well be your final destination, is a half block away as is the Hilton and a new hotel soon to be built. The UW campus is a short bus ride away or a pleasant walk down State Street.
All of the sites identified by the city have their advantages and their drawbacks. But the train station should be downtown.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. Both his reporting and his opinion writing have been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos. He’s the author of Light Blue: How center-left moderates can build an enduring Democratic majority.
