WI: Chippewa Valley officials push for passenger rail service

The Chippewa Valley is pushing for a new railway line to come through Eau Claire and connect the city of 70,000 in western Wisconsin to other passenger rail stops in the upper Midwest.

If that happens the carrier will not necessarily be Amtrak, according to state transportation officials.

Wisconsin Department of Transportation Assistant Deputy Secretary Joel Nilsestuen said Friday that Wisconsin is seeing exciting development with passenger rail travel and he expects that will continue.

'Lot of demand'

Chippewa Valley leaders want in on that action.

"I think there is a lot of demand for passenger rail service, and to that end, we are looking at studying corridors to expand service from Chicago to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee, Madison, Eau Claire to the Twin Cities," Nilsestuen said Friday at a transportation themed event for the Chippewa Valley.

Area leaders have pushed for rail service for more than three decades, according to Scott Rogers.

Rogers is Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce. But he's also the chair of the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition and a commissioner with the Chippewa- St. Croix Rail Commission as well as Wisconsin's private sector commissioner on the 8-state Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission.

"In May, we announced the first passenger rail expansion in 22 years with new service from the Twin Cities to Chicago, with the Borealis service," Nilsestuen said. "There's been incredible need, or demonstrated need."

With the success of Amtrak's Borealis, Eau Claire and surrounding communities are reinvested in a rail proposal.

A group of a few dozen Chippewa Valley residents seeking to better understand transit plans in the area turned out for a rundown of major transit issues and projects in the region on Friday. The Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce event took place at the Chippewa Valley Technical College Business Education Center.

Talks included details of road and bridge projects in the region, parking structures and a proposed transportation center in Eau Claire, airline contracts and airport plans at the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport and the potential creation of passenger railway lines connecting Eau Claire to major cities in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota.

In addition to Nilsestuen panelists included Scott Rogers, Vice President Governmental Affairs at the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce; Charity Zich, Chippewa Valley Regional Airport; Debby Jackson, Executive Director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin; Ty Fadness, Transit Manager for Eau Claire Transit; and Dave Solberg, Eau Claire Deputy City Manager.

Amtrak's Borealis

Amtrak's Borealis train made its first eastbound and westbound trips between St. Paul and Chicago in May.

"We announced that we surpassed 100,000 riders for that service, and we hit that mark much sooner than our projections anticipated," Nilsestuen said.

The state-sponsored Borealis rail line includes eight stops in Wisconsin, including La Crosse, Tomah, Wisconsin Dells, Portage, Columbus, Milwaukee, the Milwaukee airport and Sturtevant.

It also features three Minnesota stops in Winona, Red Wing and St. Paul at Union Depot.

The Borealis route uses the same track in Wisconsin and Minnesota as the Empire Builder, which continues from the Twin Cities to Portland and Seattle.

Wisconsin worked with the transportation departments in Minnesota and Illinois and contributed nearly $1 million to fund the Borealis route.

Gov. Tony Evers said in May that he would push for new passenger rail lines to Eau Claire, Madison and Green Bay.

With the passage of the federal infrastructure bill in 2021, money became available to study expansion of passenger rail lines across the United States, Rogers said.

In December 2023, The Federal Rail Administration approved grants for many of these projects, including three projects that would bring passenger trains back to Eau Claire, Menomonie, Baldwin and other communities.

"We are now in the process of conducting those studies, with hopes of getting trains rolling by 2029," the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition reports.

New funds available

Rogers said while he is glad to see the Borealis up and running he understands people's frustration about how long it took to get going.

"Why is it taking 22 years to put one train on an existing route? A lot of that is that there was no federal program like there is with other transportation modes with 80-90% or even higher federal funds."

That changed with the bipartisan infrastructure law, he said.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as enacted in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, authorizes up to $108 billion for public transportation — the largest federal investment in public transportation in the nation's history, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

"It also created $66 billion of that in advance appropriations for development and enhancement of existing corridors," Rogers said. "And FRA came out with a program or a pipeline that states and communities could apply to be in."

The Federal Railroad Administration put out the opportunity to apply for this program in the spring of 2023. That year multiple rail corridors across the country were selected for the program, including two that go through Eau Claire, Rogers said.

"Once you're in the pipeline, you can move forward with your project," he said. "We were successful at doing that, but just being on the map doesn't get you a train."

Eau Claire connections

There are ongoing discussions of connecting Eau Claire to Green Bay with one project and Eau Claire to the Twin Cities with another.

Rogers said the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition has been working on rail service to the region since 1999, leading the effort to re-establish passenger rail service through west-central Wisconsin.

"Part of our plan is to look at things like shuttles to Eau Claire, Rochester and Madison. So that may be the first opportunity we'll have to buy a ticket to Milwaukee or Chicago, where you would buy a ticket, you get on a shuttle in Eau Claire, it would take you to Tomah," Rogers said. "You get right on the train and go to Milwaukee or Chicago."

The Chippewa- St. Croix Rail Commission received a grant to work on a regional corridor between Eau Claire and the Twin Cities, Rogers said.

"There are a few things about that corridor that are unique among all the 69 corridors that were awarded," he said.

One is officials seek a competitive process for selecting the operator.

"So there's not an assumption that it will be Amtrak," he said. "In fact, there are private operators who do contract operations for commuter lines and others who are interested in doing the service, and we wanted to investigate that."

Union Pacific is interested in the region, he said.

" Union Pacific is very positive about having passenger service on its line," he said. "We wanted to investigate that as well."

Rogers said he got an update from the commission meeting this week about the Eau Claire corridor identification program.

"The consultant has been hired to take forward the first step of the program," he said.

___
(c)2024 The Chippewa Herald, Chippewa Falls, Wisc.
Visit The Chippewa Herald, Chippewa Falls, Wisc. at www.chippewa.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.