(The following article by Larry Sandler was posted on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website on December 6.)
MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — The state Department of Transportation has salvaged $1.2 million in federal funding for renovating Racine’s train station for a proposed commuter rail line to Milwaukee and Chicago, after the Legislature cut the depot project out of the state budget.
Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi told 14 Democratic lawmakers last week that his agency also had found $2.8 million in federal funding for 10 bicycle and pedestrian paths around the state, including projects in Milwaukee, Wauwatosa and Mequon.
Racine was counting on the $1.2 million as part of a $6 million project to create a downtown transit center for Belle Urban System buses and possibly Metra commuter trains. As part of that project, the city bought the old Chicago and North Western railroad depot and is renovating it.
State and local officials have agreed to start two years of preliminary engineering on a $152 million plan to extend Chicago’s Metra trains from Kenosha to Racine and downtown Milwaukee, with stops throughout the southern suburbs. The trains would run seven round trips daily and three on weekends.
But the depot and the 10 trail projects were slashed from the 2003-’05 state budget when the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee decided the federal money should be spent on highway upgrades instead, said Randy Romanski, Busalacchi’s executive assistant.
However, Transportation Department officials felt they had a commitment to the 11 projects, which already had been approved and had attracted matching funds from local governments, Romanski said.
The department’s solution was to fund the projects with other federal money not yet committed to other projects, Romanski said. But that means less money will be available in the future for other bicycle, pedestrian and public transit projects, Busalacchi warned in a letter to the 14 legislators who had called for restoring the funding.
In addition to the depot, Busalacchi’s move restores money for:
* Converting the “Beerline” railroad right of way in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood into a bicycle trail, $320,000.
* Developing a scenic bicycle and pedestrian path alongside the Menomonee River in Wauwatosa, $436,000.
* Adding bicycle lanes to Donges Bay Road in Mequon, $302,023.
* Work on a bicycle and pedestrian underpass for state Highway 30 in Madison, $176,000.
* Adding bicycle lanes to the frontage road for the West Beltline Highway in the Town of Madison, $106,800.
* Developing bicycle and pedestrian trails in Beloit, Green Bay, St. Croix County, Chippewa Falls and Wisconsin Rapids, totaling $1.46 million.