In a packed meeting hall at Monona Terrace Thursday evening, residents and county leaders showed overwhelming support for a proposed Middleton-Sun Prairie light-rail line.
Members of Dane County’s Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force presented the two remaining commuter rail proposals to the public and asked for input. Six original proposals have been narrowed down to Alternative 2A, the Middleton-Sun Prairie route, and Alternative 3, which would run from Middleton to Dane County Regional Airport.
Both proposals would upgrade existing railways and half of the cost would be federally funded. The Middleton-Sun Prairie route, with a beginning cost of $233-285 million, would include two tracks between the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Union Corners on East Washington Avenue. This would allow for 10-minute peak service in the campus area.
Alternative 3 would cost $196-237 million, and consist of a single track with trains running every 15 minutes during peak travel. During off-peak hours, travel times for both options would double.
Task force member Kenneth Kinney, associate vice president of the HNTB Corporation, said though only the Middleton-Sun Prairie route has been planned with the two-track system, either proposal could be modified to incorporate two tracks.
Most of the citizen speakers, including Sun Prairie Mayor Joe Chase, voiced support for the Middleton-Sun Prairie line because it would connect the two fastest-growing suburbs of Madison, and new projects in Sun Prairie’s downtown were built with a future mass transit system in mind.
During comments by the public, Dane County resident Gary Werner said the railway shouldn’t go to the airport because “the crescendo on global warming is going to pick up more and more.” He also echoed sentiments of many citizens who spoke when he said light-rail transit is “the potential transportation system for the future.”
Dawn Perry, a Madison resident favoring Alternative 3, said residents on the east side need the railway to get to their jobs on the west side because “it would take us two hours … on the bus.”
Kinney stressed the rail proposals would work with the existing bus system.
“The focus is on the total transit system,” Kinney said. “It’s not rail versus bus. It’s rail plus bus.”
Board member Mike Cechvala said bus rapid transit, which would create bus-only lanes through the isthmus, could work with the proposed light-rail lines, but that a better bus system could be created now for far less money than the light-rail trains.
While Cechvala said light-rail is a long way off, project manager Dave Trowbridge said support for alternative transit has come together recently and having operating trains in “four to five years would … be a good goal for us.”
Trowbridge and Kinney agreed community support has increased dramatically since Transport 2020 was initiated. Residents are now asking why the system is not already running after decades of study.
“I want to ride this train before I die,” Werner said.
