Editor’s note: Chelsea Lawliss is a member of the WISPIRG Transit Campaign Team.

The adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” may seem as overused as the battle between Sconnies and Coasties. But in reality, there is a lot of truth to be taken from it; anything worth having is worth fighting for and takes time to get. When Kevin Bargnes said in an article printed last Friday (“Current High Speed Rail plan must upgrade, US lags behind”) that the $800 million that is going to help bring high-speed rail to Madison, on a global scale, “is not that impressive,” he had a point. In comparison to countries where a high-speed rail is a norm, the U.S. is seriously behind. However, it’s a starting point to an endeavor whose benefits will be more substantial than any argument about the ridiculousness of oversized sunglasses could ever hope to be.

The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group on campus has made it one of its main priorities to educate and encourage people not only to support high-speed rail, but also to prioritize fixing crumbling roads and bridges over new highway construction and to encourage our legislators to spend taxpayer money more efficiently.

This spring, Congress will decide how to spend transportation funds that are allocated every six years in a bill called SAFETEA-LU. What happens in the next few months in D.C. will determine how this money will be spent on transportation. WISPIRG realizes now is the time to get the people of Wisconsin excited about the prospect of better transit systems.

As a member of WISPIRG’s Transit Campaign team, I know WISPIRG’s platform rests on the goals of trying to reduce oil consumption, traffic congestion and global warming pollution. The numbers speak for themselves: a full bus removes 50 cars from the road, and the combined rail and bus systems reduce the nation’s oil consumption by 3.4 billion gallons, and those are only some of the statistics.

Arguments have been made that instituting high-speed rail on a national scale will be more costly than what the benefits are, and the jobs this project will make will only be temporary. Robert Poole, a transportation expert from the libertarian Reason Foundation said, “Spending money to speed up existing train lines isn’t considered cost effective because the fast lines require new and expensive tracks.” This is true, but we have to start somewhere.

Bringing high-speed rail to the United States is going to be a long and arduous process. Undoubtedly, a lot of money will have to be invested into this project, perhaps a staggering amount, but it will be worth it, in the long run, anyway. The focus will have to be on improving existing rail lines and then moving onto expansion. The Dane County area is only one of many areas that could benefit from better transit.

Jobs will be created, and because this is not a task that can be completed overnight, they will be sustainable jobs. As the push for more environment-friendly options grows stronger, companies like Ford and Toyota will realize there is money to be made in creating rail cars that are energy efficient, instead of cars that pollute the air and increase our dependency on foreign oil — not to mention that it would eliminate the risk of faulty gas pedals.

The American Recovery and Investment Act already designated $8 billion toward transportation improvements. Once this movement for better transportation gets on track, the possibilities will be endless. The push for high-speed rail, and better transit in general, has the potential to have a snowball effect.

We can’t just let this movement pass by. There is too much money at stake to have a passive state of mind and hope everything will work out. Voice your concerns. Get involved and help get this idea out. This is not just an opportunity for a faster way to get from point A to point B. It is an opportunity to help preserve the environment and to live up to the notion that the U.S. is a leader in innovation.

The key is to have patience and to support big ideas that could lead to big changes. If every person who ever had a plan of this size thought, “Damn, this is going to be too hard,” we would all still drive horse-drawn wagons and read The Badger Herald by candlelight.

Chelsea Lawliss ([email protected]) is a sophomore intending to major in journalism.