Freight rail gets budget delivery

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By James Briggs

Gov. Scott Walker has signaled a firm commitment to trains in Wisconsin — just not the kind people can ride on.

At a time when state aid is being slashed across the board, Walker’s proposed budget would provide $60 million for freight rail acquisitions and projects during the 2011-13 biennium, the same amount former Gov. Jim Doyle included in his final budget.

“There is a tremendous amount of material that moves by freight rail,” state Rep. Jeff Stone, R-Greendale, said. “If you aren’t moving those goods by rail, it’s wear and tear on your highway infrastructure.

“In the scheme of things, it’s probably an efficient way to support moving raw materials.”

Such arguments, though, infuriate backers of high-speed rail because many of them made similar points as Walker turned away $810 million in federal money that would have paid for a line between Madison and Milwaukee.

Walker dismissed the passenger rail project as a “boondoggle” because of its costs to Wisconsin taxpayers, whom the Doyle administration predicted would pay an annual $5 million in operating costs for high-speed rail.

Walker’s budget commitment would lead to at least four consecutive years spending an annual $30 million on freight rail.

“If rail is as ineffective as this governor claims it to be, wouldn’t he have also gone after freight rail as well?” said state Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine. “He didn’t, and my guess is his (transportation) secretary is telling him it’s a good investment of taxpayer dollars to have infrastructure on freight rail because it’s how we move goods around the state in a cost-effective way.

“I just wish this governor could see that same logic as it applies to moving people around.”

The true cost of high-speed rail for Wisconsin taxpayers is unknown because the U.S. Department of Transportation reallocated the state’s share before setting an annual aid amount. Walker and other Republicans have said the state’s share of operating costs could have been much greater than $5 million a year.

Still, Steve Hiniker, executive director for 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, a Madison-based advocacy group that supported high-speed rail, said Wisconsin likely will “throw a much bigger dollar amount at freight” than it would have paid for passenger rail. It doesn’t make sense, he said, to conclude freight is worth the money and high-speed rail isn’t.

“This is partisan politics,” Hiniker said, “because a rational economic analysis would lead a logical person to a completely different solution.”

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

At least some of the money Wisconsin spends on freight rail during the next two years could go toward buying tracks the federal government would have paid for under the high-speed rail plan, said Frank Huntington, a supervisor for the state Department of Transportation’s rail project and property management unit.

Wisconsin, Huntington said, is in the midst of negotiations with Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific Corp. to buy close to 60 miles of track, including up to five miles in Madison the state was set to buy before abandoning the Madison-to-Milwaukee line. As part of a three-way railroad partnership, the state would buy the track, and the Wisconsin River Rail Transit Commission would lease the track to Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co., Huntington said.

The USDOT could have paid for the Madison-area line, he said.

“We were looking at buying it last year when the high-speed rail line was moving forward because portions of it would have been needed,” Huntington said. “Once the project died, we stopped pursuing it, but (Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co.) still has a need to acquire it for freight rail.”

It is too early to estimate how much the state will pay for the track, Huntington said. Whatever the amount, though, it will be a one-time payment rather than an annually recurring operating expense, as high-speed rail would have created.

Also, Stone said, he thinks money spent on freight rail produces a much greater return on investment.

“In terms of economic activity, I think you’re talking about keeping industries functional,” he said. “Entire industries depend on freight rail in the state. That’s obviously not the case with high-speed rail. We don’t have high-speed rail, so there’s no one that’s dependent upon it.”

But to pay for freight rail and not mass transit, Hiniker said, is to abandon people who need public transportation to get to work.

“I’ve never seen such a loathing of transit,” Hiniker said. “It’s almost like we want to create a Detroit here.”