Connectivity

The primary function of passenger High Speed Rail (HSR) is to connect people to distant locations and connectivity is the ability to link place directly. Implementing this HSR with several stops along the wisconsin corridor is aimed at increasing the connectivity between madison and milwaukee, but also between rural wisconsin and urban areas of wisconsin. Wisconsin currently has two passenger rail lines: an amtrak line that runs from chicago to milwaukee, and milwaukee to the twin cities completely bypassing southcentral wisconsin, Madison to be specific.

The other rail line is the hiawatha line running from Milwaukee to Chicago. Madison has other means of national connectivity, the Dane County Airport is situated at the edge of the city. The airport is relatively small (14 gates) and only offers domestic, fairly local flights. One of the proposed stops for Madison’s HSR station was at the Dane County Airport. Several of the articles that were analyzed stated that for the city of Madison, having the stop out at the airport would not entice people to use the HSR with it being relatively far away and not very accessible. This small detail would completely undermine the entire argument for having a HSR line go through madison. Other proposed stops were the Yahara station, near Tenney Park and Monona Terrace. Going into further detail about these is assessed in another part of the literature review, but connecting these to connectivity, both of these stations would be ideal, or at least better than the Dane County Airport for accessibility. The isthmus is where the most buses converge, either near campus or the square, having the Madison station near these two would be the best choice for intra city public transportation.

With having madison being part of an interconnected web of HSR lines, there are some drawbacks with this large web. According to Levinson’s article on HSR Accessibility the benefits of having a HSR network would only go to larger metropolitan areas, rather than local benefits. The proposed Wisconsin corridor seems to contradict that statement, the three stops outside of Madison and Milwaukee are in smaller towns. It wouldn’t be feasible to have a stop along every town on the way, but having a well dispersed trio of stations in between makes it easier to connect smaller communities.

Levingston further points out that having large urban cities branch out and connect with smaller cities increases accessibility. In the context of the wisconsin corridor, Madison would be connected to milwaukee, which would be connected to Chicago, which would be the main hub to have access to the rest of the united states. Having the only HSR connection to the rest of the country through both Milwaukee and Chicago may not be the fastest for some circumstances. Having a more gridded train network might benefit commuters rather than several long lines connecting to one main hub. According to Levinson “... the mesh-like network with precision timing architecture in Switzerland better serves its population than the hub and spoke mainline system in Japan” (Levinson, 2012).

Benesch’s article on the Tri-State Rail 1991 study to assess the demand for a new rail line in the state of wisconsin has many interesting ideas that we can take into consideration for this assessment. But there have been many factors that have changed since then, such as a population increase and interest in such transportation. The appeal for implementing the tri-state HSR would be the ability for people to travel between cities faster and cheaper than driving or flying, these were the current methods of travel at the time and are still considered the primary means of travel today in the United States. The end goal of the system proposed in this is to connect Chicago with the Twin Cities, with two different routes proposed, a southern corridor and a northern corridor. The southern corridor would connect milwaukee with madison, La Crosse, Rochester, and ending in the Twin Cities, whereas the northern corridor would start at Milwaukee as well but go through Green Bay/Appleton, Wausau, Eau Claire, and finally the Twin Cities.

At the time, both of these routes would end up servicing a similar population size, the southern corridor having just barely higher numbers. There is also the factor of appeals for each route. The southern route would go through the capital city of wisconsin, and as the article states, “Madison, as a capital city, and Rochester, as the home of the Mayo Clinic, have an ‘attractiveness’ and significance as travel destinations that cannot be accounted for by their population size.” (TMS/BENESCH, 1991). Contrary, the northern corridor would have an attractive quality due to Lambeau Stadium in Green Bay, and all three northern cities being the gateway to northern wisconsin.

The study also looked into several different speeds for the trains to travel at, these speeds included 125 mph, 185 mph, and 300 mph. Each different speed would have different operation requirements and interferences. For example, “The 125 mph technology option will use an existing freight railroad right-of-way and could therefore conflict directly with freight train operations. The 185 option will use a new right-of-way outside the urban areas, but must use a common right-of-way to access the downtowns of the major cities. The 300 mph option would have its own elevated guideway, and it was assumed it could access cities without directly interfering with freight operations.” (TMS/Benesch,1991). For clarification sake, the definition of right of way is for one vehicle, in this case a train, to take precedence over another. The lowest speed proposed coincides with the 2001 no build plan, using existing rails while having to share them with freight trains. The current right of way is that freight trains hold priority and require the passenger HSR to allow the freight trains to pass when needed.

Wisconsin has existing rail lines that have been used to travel goods to and from the state for nearly two centuries. In the recent decades passenger trains have been using these rails as well. Ziolkowski claims that these existing freight rails would be used for passenger HSR, doing so would decrease the infrastructure cost while increasing the connectivity between madison, milwaukee and chicago. As good of an idea as this may be, there are several problems that arise with it. The first problem is one that Ziolkowski brings up, in that having passenger HSR trains and freight trains using the same tracks is complicated. “Much of the redundancy in the national rail system is gone because of the consolidation and abandonment of rail right-of-way.” (Ziolkowski, 2012). Since these tracks mainly only operate for freight purposes, there is no problem with the right of way, but adding the HSR would need rail right-of-way rules. The other possibility is to build new tracks along the existing tracks, but that gets into economics, politics, and land allocation issues.

The last century saw the rise of the automobile, and it is now to the point where people have one or more cars. The automobile has made transportation much easier, being able to travel short distances or across continents; because of this public transportation has seen fewer travellers. The newest generation, the Millennials, are becoming more important to how today’s infrastructure is and shaping how tomorrow’s modes of transportation will change. The largest change that is taking place is the absence of personal transportation; much of today’s young adults, and parts of the elderly community, are foregoing purchasing personal vehicles or using planes, whether it is voluntarily or not.

Some of these reasons include, but are not limited to, lack of interest, lack of financial funds, inability to drive either from physical impairment or just not having a driver's license. “This shift is occurring even in the absence of significant new transportation infrastructure improvement.” (Kamga, 2015) Meaning that even with the decline of current transportation means, there hasn’t been new technology to replace it yet.The main point that Kamga is making in their article is that implementing HSR around the nation would be a way for those unable to travel by current means to be able to travel at a reasonable cost.