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Kenosha News Focus - commuter trains

Two opinions published June 12, 2005 by Kenosha News, and presented here with permission

With Wisc. DOT Sec. Frank Busalacchi scarcely past the city limits after delivering a check for $400,000 on June 2 to Kenosha County Executive Allan Kehl, the local newspaper's editors chose commuter trains proposed for Kenosha-Racine-Milwkaee for the Kenosha News Focus weekly feature topic. The following two opinions by SouthEast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commssion executive director Philip C. Evenson and KenRail webmaster Norman Siler were accompanied by numerous reader comments about expected use of Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee train service:

Rail benefits go beyond transportation

by Philip C. Evenson, executive director,
SouthEast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission

©2005 Kenosha News

   The recent award of a $400,000 state grant from Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi to Kenosha County Executive Allan Kehl will permit the proposed Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail extension to move ahead one more step toward becoming a reality. The grant — together with a federal grant and local staff support — will cover the cost of the next phase of project development. That phase will refine the physical and operational plans for the commuter rail proposal, prepare an environmental impact statement, and develop a funding plan.
   The proposed project would extend the existing commuter rail service that now operates between Chicago and Kenosha to Racine and Milwaukee. The extension would provide a continuous, seamless service along the entire 85-mile lakeshore corridor between downtown Milwaukee and downtown Chicago. As presently envisioned, the extension would provide seven roundtrips on weekdays between Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee, and as well, between these areas and the Chicago area.
   The benefits of the proposed commuter rail extension include:

• Improved accessibility — Kenosha, Milwaukee, and Racine area residents would have improved access to jobs in the corridor, not only in southeastern Wisconsin, but also in Lake and Cook Counties in Illinois, including the Chicago north shore suburbs and downtown Chicago. The Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha commuter rail stations are located in proximity to low-income and minority populations and will particularly improve their access to jobs.
• Economic development — Commuter rail will improve the connection between the Milwaukee, Chicago, Racine, and Kenosha areas, permitting this interconnected bi-state region and its components to better compete nationally and globally. Employers will be able to better attract employees whose spouse may need to work in one of the other communities along this 85-mile corridor.
• Neighborhood development and redevelopment — Commuter rail will positively influence land use development and redevelopment in the station areas with attendant increases in land and property values. Higher density, higher value residential and office development may be expected to locate near stations along with retail and service businesses. A “ripple effect” will occur with neighborhoods surrounding station areas being positively influenced and experiencing similar benefits.
• Fast, convenient, and attractive service — Commuter rail would not be affected by traffic congestion, would be much faster than buses, and for longer trips during congested rush hours would be as fast, or faster, than commuting by car.
• Reliability — Commuter rail is extremely reliable, as it is not affected by highway traffic congestion, or by inclement weather, including severe winter storms.
• Positive effect on highway system and environment — Commuter rail can help slow the growth in highway traffic by encouraging some trips to be made by mass transit rather than automobile. During the more than a decade that Interstate 94 will be under construction from the Illinois state line to downtown Milwaukee, commuter rail would be an invaluable travel alternative. Commuter rail will also contribute to reductions in transportation air pollutant emissions and energy consumption.

   The benefits are substantial and broad — not just traditional transportation benefits, but land use and economic development benefits as well. These are the reasons commuter rail continues to be improved and expanded in metropolitan areas that already have it, and is being introduced in other metropolitan areas. In the Chicago area, commuter rail is considered a valuable community asset and is recognized not only as an important transportation service, but also as a focus for stable, more efficient, higher density and higher value development. The potential to realize these benefits is why a growing number of public officials and business leaders in the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee corridor are in support of bringing to fruition the commuter rail extension.

Commuters find trains less stressful

by Norman Siler, KenRail webmaster

©2005 Kenosha News

Sunrise on Sunday brings promise of a bright, relaxing day ahead, for leisure time with family and friends, for church and yard work, for anything less hectic than the Monday through Friday pace after sunrise.

Some households in Kenosha and Walworth counties face a less stressful commute because a job in Illinois can be reached by riding a Metra commuter train. From Harvard, from McHenry and Fox Lake, from Antioch and Woodstock, and from Kenosha.

Those commuters flock each workday morning, as the summer sun arises to warm, then bake each day, to bike racks and parking lots at Metra stations an hour or more train ride from downtown Chicago. Then they settle in with a newspaper, sometimes a cup of coffee, and they relax for the most of their daily commute. Or they nap; or they network with other regular Metra commuters.

Once upon a time that option was available to some in southeast Wisconsin, for commuting to Milwaukee. But Wisconsin opted for less reliance on train-commutes years ago; many states and metropolitan areas did also as car travel became routine, as highways grew wider and more plentiful. As the Interstate highway system grew and grew.

Some metro areas did not relinquish their commuter trains; Chicago is one of them.

During the 1990s, highways continued to grow, but not enough to handle the cars eager to travel on them. Clogged southern California freeways, the car-commute role model for America, so badly frustrated so many commuters that costly public transit projects were devised and built. During that era of reevaluating commuting infrastructure, Milwaukee considered a light rail system, recognizing as other metro areas did that ever wider expressways could not solve the congestion. But Milwaukee’s proposal did not connect with the well-run Chicago area commuter train system, Metra, and was controversial, in part due to cost.

Also in the mid-1990s, resumption of train-commuting along the first Chicago-Milwaukee track (built in the 1850s) emerged as a possibility, and Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) verified its feasibility in 1998, after a preliminary study. A second study looking in much greater detail at Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (K-R-M) commuter trains confirmed that a modest service level could start up and communities along the route near Lake Michigan rallied support to the proposal. Cudahy, Racine and Kenosha each devised a transit plan for linking bus service to the proposed train service. Somers is among several communities with a tentative plan for development at a commuter train station, and around it.

Northeast Illinois counties and communities have much more experience at adding stations along a Metra track, and they consistently plan for expansion because congestion continues to worsen on the region’s expressways. They consistently plan for new residences, new retail development, new offices and other types of employers.

Economic growth and its more basic cousin, economic survival, are consistently cited by the business districts and corporations which endorse K-R-M commuter trains. Convenient travel for leisure activities, as much as for commuting to and from work, are sought for employees and for customers. And in the established neighborhoods, which were built before cars dominated our travel, the need for alternatives is most evident.

Those neighborhoods and those mature business districts prevail along the track for proposed K-R-M commuting, more so than any other commuting route anywhere in Wisconsin. So the most cost-effective way to improve travel, especially for commuting, in the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee shoreline corridor is to add commuter trains, to reestablish an option which most other areas lost years ago, because their track was no longer used and was removed.

Some of the numerous pieces in this labyrinthine proposal are in place, such as the new Racine bus transfer center and the Kenosha Metra station. Some pieces are in growth plans in company offices and in downtown renewal goals. Seen together, they hold for our future in southeast Wisconsin along the Lake Michigan shoreline a bright prospect for commuter bike racks and parking lots to emulate the new and old commuter rail services elsewhere in America: in northeast Illinois, in Nashville, in the Twin Cities of Minnesota

K-R-M commuter trains will add a key component to an even larger project: remaking the former Rust Belt sites near the lakeshore into prosperity powerhouses which energize and brighten our towns and cities, and all southeast Wisconsin.

Return to KenRail home page | Visit Kenosha News website

Read previous Kenosha News editorial, of 12 April 2003

Read previous Kenosha News editorial, of 29 Sept 2003

Read previous Kenosha News editorial, of 16 Dec 2004

Read subsequent Kenosha News editorial, of 22 December 2006