People familiar with my love for travel sometimes are amused to hear I've never driven in Chicago. Such congestion used to unhinge me. Now it's simply a turn-off.

I've become too impatient and frugal to put up with the traffic and "this-would-buy-dinner" parking fees. Until 2001, that meant scarcely knowing the city. Then I discovered Metra, Chicago's regional train system.

One-way cost between Harvard, Ill. (population 9,000, the closest Metra station to Madison) and downtown Chicago is less than $10. That includes $1.50 for 24 hours of parking. A $5 ticket allows unlimited Metra riding on Saturdays and Sundays.

The two-hour trips are smooth and usually uneventful. Trains are punctual. Conductors keep people civil, and train cars relatively tidy. Once in Chicago, an efficient network of buses and trains takes me just about any place I want to go.

That's the way it's typically worked a lot farther from home, too, be it a bullet train from Seoul to Daegu (similar in distance to Madison-Minneapolis), a pastoral loop around Italy's major cities or standing elbow-to-elbow for an hour between Abiko and Tokyo. I've preferred mass transit to car rentals for years.

So I'm all for the development of high-speed rail in Wisconsin, but the prep work needs to involve more than train assemblage and rail clearance.

Much about the way we live holds convenience at the highest of priorities. We are not conditioned to think of trains as a sensible and earth-friendly way to travel routinely. They are a novelty.

We are all for offsetting carbon emissions, as long as we can keep our loose leash of independence and don't have to strain ourselves.

How much time must we save to be content with leaving the driving to somebody else? Can we scurry without a fuss into an assigned railcar and seat, on a train that perhaps departs only 15 minutes after its arrival? Will we whine about hoisting our suitcases from platform to train to shelving above our heads?

Equipment for Wisconsin's rail project comes from Spain, whose investment in high-speed AVE rail infrastructure equals 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product. The country's work began in 1992, with a 293-mile link between Madrid and Seville.

Now there are 1,373 miles in the rail network, and 40 percent of the population lives within 30 miles of a high-speed rail station. By 2020, about 90 percent will have such access.

Amtrak's longstanding reputation for being tardy -- sometimes by hours -- means any new or corollary rail system in the U.S. begins business with a bad rap. Success, in part, depends on whether new passenger routes will share tracks owned by freight railroad companies.

Amtrak, for example, controls train movements on only 29 percent of its 21,000 route miles.

The result: About 68 percent of Amtrak's runs were on time during fiscal year 2006. In Spain, AVE's on-time rate is 99.7 percent. And when a train is tardy by more than five minutes, riders get a refund.

My hope is we have the political will to build a rail network that is a model for the rest of the U.S., one committed to quality in service and affordability. Can we have both?

I want our Wisconsin trains to run on time, plus offer reasonable fares for train rides and car parking. I want a safe and reliable public transit system in place at my destination, so I can navigate a city easily, without the expense of cab or car rental fees.

I also want this project to work, for the good of Wisconsin tourism. What a wonderful way to encourage travelers, particularly those from other countries, to explore our state instead of defining the Midwest by what they experience in only Chicago or the Twin Cities.

Bergin, of Madison, is a travel writer who rode the AVE during a recent trip to Spain.