The signing of the Pacific Railway Act by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 is lauded as a defining moment in America’s history. Connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the transcontinental railroad represented the epoch of westward expansion.

Today, the stakes are different. With a highly developed highway system connecting every corner of the country, trains may have become a somewhat antiquated facet of America’s infrastructure.

In this sense, we understand Governor-Elect Scott Walker’s aversion to bringing the much publicized and politically controversial high-speed rail to Wisconsin. We are also sympathetic to his criticisms of wasteful government spending.

Nonetheless, we believe stopping the green-lit high-speed rail project dead in its tracks would be to deliberately miss a valuable opportunity for Wisconsin; the likes of which are not likely to come around again anytime soon.

Considering the letter U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood sent to Walker this week making it very clear that the money given to Wisconsin could not be used for anything other than the high-speed rail, we strongly encourage him to reconsider his position.

With this all-or-none situation Walker is now faced with, he should reexamine the many potential benefits that clearly outweigh the negligible costs he often cites in his myopic opposition to the project.

First, there is the obvious benefit of job creation. Walker has pledged to create 250,000 jobs by 2015. A goal we commend and support – but that means we’ve got to create 172 jobs a day.

In addition to the thousands of permanent jobs that would be created should the project come to fruition, it’s also predicted to employ nearly 5,000 people as soon as 2012. With a statewide unemployment rate hovering just below 8 percent, these jobs would be an invaluable boon to a significant number of workers while the economy continues its slow recovery.

Of course there is the annual cost of maintaining the railway, which would almost certainly be a burden on state taxpayers. Strictly measuring the benefit of the jobs that would be created against the predicted annual cost of the line is tricky business, and we understand how a simplistic comparison might favor halting the project.

Upon closer examination of the potential benefits, including those that may be too abstract or variable to include in a simple cost-benefit analysis, we believe the relatively small annual cost is more than offset.

The state’s yearly rail subsidy is projected to be about $7.5 million. This is barely a drop in the bucket at 0.2 percent of the state’s $3.4 billion annual transportation budget.

Additionally, Gov. Jim Doyle, an advocate of the project since the beginning, claims halting the project at this point would immediately cost the state $100 million and at least 400 jobs. While we are cautious of these exact figures, we do not doubt the immediate economic impact would be counterintuitive to recovery, and a variable blow to the state’s still shaky economy.

Walker has said he will fight to use the funds to fix the state’s crumbling roads and bridges. If there were in fact an option to trade the train for better roads, there could very well be a tenable argument to do so.

As LaHood has made clear this isn’t a real option, we would much prefer to see an $810 million gift spent on something that would bring lasting and meaningful improvements to Wisconsin, not New York or Illinois. Spending it on impermanent improvements for which money is already allocated seems to us to be misguided and near-sighted.

Walker acts as though his election was a referendum on the train. It was not. It is fair to consider it a referendum on the Democrats, but bearing in mind LaHood is a Republican himself, Walker’s attempt to make the train a partisan issue is misguided.

Reminiscent of the move 150 years ago to craft the back-bone of American commerce out of steel rails, President Obama has made it clear with his $8 billion dollar national high-speed rail plan that trains will be an integral part of the country’s economic future and infrastructure. Agree with the plan or not, it would be unfortunate for Wisconsin to be left at the station.