In a first step toward building a Midwestern high-speed rail line connecting Madison with Chicago and the Twin Cities, Wisconsin is buying two passenger trains from a Spanish company that will hire state workers to assemble and maintain them.

The $47.5 million purchase is expected to create 80 jobs initially, and company officials said Friday they are considering assembling the trains at Janesville’s General Motors production plant, which closed in April idling 1,200 workers. Sites in Milwaukee are also under consideration.

Gov. Jim Doyle, local officials and transportation experts said the rail line would spur leisure travel to and from Madison and link the city, home to UW-Madison and its technology-related research, to the economies of Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago.

“It’s very exciting for our state, for the economic growth of our region,” said Teresa Adams, a UW-Madison engineering professor who runs the Midwest Regional University Transportation Center. “It’s certainly good for our economy. There are a lot of intellectual hubs to be connected.”

But critics said the price tag for just the train purchase was too high at a time when the state recently closed a $6.6 billion shortfall by raising some taxes and fees, cutting programs and furloughing and laying off workers for the coming two years. They also said the number of jobs created — even as company officials said the number could grow in time — paled in comparison to the tens of thousands of jobs lost in the state in recent months.

“This is not the time to start saying we want to play with trains,” said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, top Republican on the Legislature’s budget committee.

Overall, the Madison-Chicago high-speed line will cost up to $600 million, including improving the Milwaukee-Chicago line to accommodate high-speed trains, said Chris Klein, executive assistant for the state Department of Transportation. Lawmakers had already authorized borrowing for the purchase announced Friday, and the trains could be on the rails within two years, Doyle said.

They would replace aging trains on Amtrak’s Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago, which Wisconsin and Illinois pay for Amtrak to operate, about $7 million last year. Klein said the state’s costs would go down because it would own the trains rather than use Amtrak’s.

If the state wins some of the $8 billion in federal economic stimulus funding set aside for high-speed rail, it will purchase two more trains from the Spanish company, Patentes Talgo of Madrid, to be used between Madison and Milwaukee, Doyle said. They could be operable within four years if track and grade crossing improvements are completed by then, Klein said.
Stop at Madison airport

The Madison station would be at the Dane County Regional Airport.

As a result, local officials are reconsidering the current plan to run a local commuter rail system between Middleton and Sun Prairie, and may now choose a route linking Middleton and the airport. Both options would run trains through Downtown Madison.

“Given what appears to be the real serious acceleration of the high-speed rail … rethinking (the route) is a logical thing to do right now,” said Topf Wells, chief of staff to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said he supports putting the high-speed station at the airport.

“We also need to consider a second station Downtown,” Cieslewicz said. “But I don’t want that conversation to muddle our work on making sure we get high-speed rail here as quickly as possible.”

Doyle traveled to Spain in February to review Patentes Talgo’s facilities and to ride on their trains.

The aluminum trains can reach speeds of up to 110 mph and carry as many as 420 passengers.

Under the state’s high-speed rail plan, the Madison-to-Milwaukee line would reach 110 mph as soon at it begins service. The Milwaukee to Chicago line would initially operate at a top speed of 79 mph because its track needs to be upgraded. It would reach 110 mph once the Madison to the Twin Cities and Green Bay to Milwaukee links are in service, Klein said.

That’s because officials want to establish service in the rest of the state first and upgrading the track is expensive, he said.

Doyle said the train purchase represents a commitment to high-speed rail that no other state is making.

“We’re one state in the country that’s really stepping up on high-speed passenger rail,” Doyle said Friday.

He said there’s little doubt the state will get a portion of $8 billion in federal stimulus money for high-speed rail. The first round of grants is scheduled to be announced this fall.

President Barack Obama has also called for federal spending of $1 billion annually on high-speed rail.

Patentes Talgo officials said Friday they envision their Wisconsin plant as an assembly hub for the Midwest.
Antonio Perez, chief executive officer of the company’s U.S. subsidiary, said the company will build the empty shells of the trains in Spain and ship them to Wisconsin. All interior design and assembly work will be completed here, he said.

As long as other states continue to buy the company’s trains, the assembly plant will remain viable, he said.
Regardless, the company services and maintains its trains while they are in operation, he said.

In Washington state, for example, 67 Talgo and Amtrak workers maintain the five Talgo trains used there and in Oregon, but the company closed its assembly plant when it was no longer needed, Perez said.

He said the company should decide in six to nine months where it wants to locate its assembly facility.

Reporter Matthew DeFour contributed to this story.