Posted on 04/26/2010 8:03:47 AM PDT by Willie Green
The state Department of Transportation is planning on one Madison Amtrak station in 2013, but one expert found that having two stations, downtown and at the local airport, is what works best in many other cities.
Author James McCommons, who spent a year riding 26,000 miles across the United States by rail, is speaking Tuesday about his book, "Waiting on a Train," at the Madison Central Library.
Having two stations makes train service more convenient in Milwaukee, which has stops at the airport and downtown, McCommons said. He also saw stations in both locations in European cities, where he recently rode trains for 50 hours over a two-month period.
"In Europe, they have both a downtown stop and an airport stop because they know you need to bring all these modes together," McCommons said. "We need better connectivity between these modes."
One thing he observed in his travels is that rail passengers won't necessarily take well to having to switch to a different mode of transportation, such as a bus, to get to their destination, an argument that favors locating the Madison station Downtown.
In many other places, the airport also is connected by train so that passengers have only a short walk between modes of transportation.
Whatever number of stations Madison gets, Wisconsin is already well ahead of other states in planning for the future of rail in the United States.
"With a lot of these states, they want better passenger rail service, but they expect Amtrak to provide it for them," McCommons said. But in states such as California, Washington, Illinois and Wisconsin, state officials are committing to subsidizing rail service and buying train sets. "These DOTs are thinking of themselves as departments of transportation and not highway departments."
The MUZZIE taxi drivers in “Madisonstan” don’t want it!
A strong political leader can make the trains run on time.
A weak political leader runs a country with a sclerotic transportation system.
Neither of these is good.
Absolutely. Given how crowded airports are, and the immense expense that would be involved in expanding them, using rail to take up the slack on shorter routes is the most cost effective option.
I would even think, if it were one or the other, that having the main station underneath the airport would be the more sensible.
...and wall-to-wall socialism. I'll pass, thanks.
If a Leftist was traveling east at 90 MPH, and a Muslim was traveling West at 50 MPH, how long would it take the news media to lie about the Tea Party movement?
I’m not a fan of publicly-subsidized rail. In my area, the incompetence of managing the public roads (at every level) is eclipsed only by that of bus/transit service.
That said, if rail is to make any sense at all, it really ought to be integrated into the air travel system.
Ideally, there would be alternative methods to get to any destination so that bottlenecks could be circumvented, even if alternative methods might take longer. Plus, you could then use a mix of methods to travel from point to point.
I know this would never pass the Teamsters political wing, but one thing I always thought would make sense was some sort of dedicated goods transportation system.
Think of those old tubes that banks and department stores used to use. Picture those scaled up and run between the lanes on interstates running on electricity instead of a vacuum. They could be completely automated, and attain very high speeds. Hubs could be set up near air and sea ports, and near major interstate junctions.
I’m not sure what the best size would be, but I suspect an awful lot of freight could be standardized into something smaller than a compact car, perhaps a 3-4 foot diameter tube buried just below grade or routed up over obstacles when required.
Lots of current truck, rail, and air traffic could be eliminated in favor of “tube-ing” goods to the destination. It would be unaffected by weather, faster than virtually any other means, and would likely cost far less to implement than passenger service, with less safety constraints. More importantly, it would free up other modes of transportation to do what they do best.
Cars are about freedom.
You must be unfamiliar with the terms "traffic jam" and "gridlock".
“The MUZZIE taxi drivers in “Madisonstan” don’t want it!”
Minneapolis is in another state.
“where he recently rode trains for 50 hours over a two-month period.”
Now that’s some extensive research. Did he get paid a full 8 hour day for his commute?
“who spent a year riding 26,000 miles across the United States by rail”
Well, at least he averaged 71 miles per day over a whole year. That must’ve been almost two hours a day!! This sure makes him an EXPERT in my book!!!
So, how many cities did he visit in Europe to ride for 50 hours? Did he fly from city to city to check out these fantastic rail systems? I get it, he flew from Paris to Copenhagen, rode the train to the Stroget for a smorrebrod lunch, then back to the airport to fly to London, where he took the tube to Picadilly station for a pint and some fish and chips and then back to Heathrow...
Really, who paid for this “research”? Where’s the accountability? Where’s the transparency? And what are the ridership figures for Milwaukees wonderful rail transportation? Does anybody but visitors ride the rail from the airport to downtown? Couldn’t money be better spent than for unmovable rails?
I came back from a year in Europe very train supportive, but as I traveled around the U.S., I realized that the Continental train setup worked because of the short distances and high densities— two negatives that make trains unviable in most of the U.S.
Eliminate the train and you wion’t need the stations!
There is no business or population density in the Milwaukee and Madison metros. These are suburban commute cities with pockets of business and employment spread out in 100 sq/mile areas.
I’m just back from a couple days of business meetings in DC and the difference between that metro and Milwaukee’s set up are night and day. We stayed 10 miles out of the city and the trains were quite efficient - no where in Milwaukee and/or Madison is there a similar set up of densities spread out.
Plus, Milwaukee’s highway and surface street set ups are too convenient and efficient to make this even plausible from an ease-of-use standpoint.
It’s a loser in every way.
Quite. Here, it takes nearly as long to get to the station as it does to get to the destination.
Given convenience & capacity & cost, I find it better to drive a thousand miles than to fly. Ground takes 3x longer, but I can still get there well within 1 day and can haul whole family (dogs included) with whatever we need, on our own impromptu schedule, and not have to rent a car when we get there.
Putting aside the juvenile cynicism which seems to pervade this site, I agree absolutely. Paris has a near flawless route from Degaulle to downtown rail atation.
In the US, DC has a straight metro connection from Reagan to Union Station (Amtrak). BWI through a bus shuttle, and Portland OR (PDX) thru TriMet (metro), try to connect to Amtrak, but its just not all that efficient.
They have to be closely coupled, then indeed the rail can serve as adjunct for the shorter (<200 mi) destinations.
One just doesn't want to drag bags and switch modes more than once.
Hey, the government's paying for it. Why not build three stations?
It depends on what would be most convenient for passengers: more stops or faster travel.
In much larger cities like NYC, Chicago, Alanta, etc., it would be more convenient to have a third or even fourth station in different parts of the city. But that would be undesirable and unnecessary in smaller cities like Milwaukee.
“Think of those old tubes that banks and department stores used to use. Picture those scaled up and run between the lanes on interstates running on electricity instead of a vacuum. They could be completely automated, and attain very high speeds. Hubs could be set up near air and sea ports, and near major interstate junctions.”
Make the tubes ten feet or so in diameter, and they could accommodate standard freight containers. And...how about similarly sized passenger cars mixing with a high-speed freight stream?
Madison IS Wisconsin, Minneapolis is in Minnesota!
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