Residents of Madison will soon know the location of the city’s high-speed rail station on the line to Milwaukee when the Wisconsin Department of Transportation announces their decision later this month.
Gov. Jim Doyle and Wisconsin Secretary of Transportation Frank Busalacchi plan to announce where they will locate the Madison station by the middle of this month, an e-mail to constituents from Ald. Marsha Rummel, District 6, said.
Rummel said representatives from WisDOT told her and other city officials, including Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the state will make their decision about the location of the Madison station without any open public hearings.
The nature of the debate concerning the location of the station has changed in the past months, Rummel said, because city officials have also considered stations at Monona Terrace and the Kohl Center, in addition to Yahara Station.
Rummel told The Badger Herald she has confidence WisDOT will eventually make a sound decision.
“Each station has its positives and negatives,” Rummel said. “I don’t think [WisDOT] will just throw a dart and pick one.”
The Yahara station, which would lie on the extreme east side of downtown at the corner of East Washington and 1st Streets, could be the most feasible option, Rummel said. She added the Yahara station could avoid the delays caused by rearranging trains that would continue to the Twin Cities if the high-speed connection is extended.
Janet Piraino, Cieslewicz’s chief of staff, said Cieslewicz now supports a Monona Terrace station because he wants a location as close as possible to the downtown core. She added the city can only advise WisDOT about the station’s location and cannot provide a binding commitment to one spot.
“Right now the decision is not in our hands,” Piraino said. “But we want to be as helpful as we can in knowing what stations might be difficult from a traffic or [an] engineering perspective.”
Piraino also said the announcement of Madison as a location for the high-speed rail station came as a pleasant surprise to the city, which had not yet launched any inquiries into the location of a station before the announcement.
WisDOT and the Federal Railroad Administration studied the feasibility of a Madison station nearly a decade ago, Piraino said, but the city had not because they did not anticipate being chosen as a stop in the network.
New Associated Students of Madison Legislative Affairs chair Sam Polstein said he has spoken with various city and state officials about the collaboration between students, the city and WisDOT regarding the placement of the station.
Polstein said he believes the ideal location for the station would be the Yahara location, although the proposed Kohl Center and Monona Terrace locations could be more convenient solely for students.
“I think the general impression is the closer, the better,” Polstein said. “I think students are also thinking the Kohl Center or Monona Terrace may be too congested.”
Ideally, Polstein said, WisDOT will follow the city’s recommendation, giving the city the decision-making role for the station’s location.
