Rock County Wants Governor to Pay for Rail Feasibility Study

Last week on Thursday, the Rock County Board of Supervisors got the ball rolling on another improvement that likely will take a decade or more to achieve.

The board approved a resolution asking Gov. Tony Evers to include funding in his Biennial Budget for an updated and detailed rail study so that Rock County can perhaps secure a passenger or commuter train stop somewhere in the county.

“Every study you look at, the economic impact of having commuter rail is phenomenal,” said R.J. Sutterlin, a Rock County Supervisor who represents Janesville. Sutterlin introduced the resolution.

Sutterlin said the cost of a rail impact student could cost between $25,000 to $400,000.

“Rock County has a great geographical location. We have people who travel daily to Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Rockford and people who come in from those places,” Sutterlin said. “It may take 10 years or more, but we can’t even get in line unless we do this study.”

In November 2023, the county created an ad-hoc committee on passenger rail development to look at whether the county should go after train service funding and if it is feasible. The committee includes Sutterlin, two other supervisors and four community members. The community members include Judy Robson of Beloit, who spent 24 years representing Rock County in the Wisconsin State Assembly and Senate.

“When I was in the legislature, I helped get a feasibility study to bring Metra up to Rock County,” recalled Robson, who retired from politics in 2016.

Metra is a commuter rail system that serves the Chicago area and the surrounding counties in northeast Illinois.

“It showed it was viable and wouldn’t be too expensive,” Robson said. “But we had budget issues and never went anywhere. That’s how I got interested.”

So when she was approached about serving on the ad-hoc committee she agreed. Many of the economic advantages to having passenger rail remain and, with Democrats in the White House, there is federal money available to expand rail.

Rail access has become a political football between the two parties. Robson experienced that firsthand in 2010. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle had worked with the Obama administration to land an $810 million grant to build a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison. When Doyle declined to run and Scott Walker was elected, Walker refused to take the money.

At the beginning of 2024, Amtrak was operating two routes in Wisconsin. The Hiawatha Service runs several times a day between Chicago and Milwaukee. The Empire Builder is a long-distance train that does one round trip a day from Chicago to Seattle/Portland with stops at LaCrosse, Tomah, Wisconsin Dells, Columbus and Milwaukee.

Metra also runs a route from Chicago to Milwaukee called the Milwaukee District North line that stops in Fox Lake.

In May, Amtrak launched the Borealis, an inter-city rail service the runs from St. Paul, Minnesota to Chicago with Wisconsin stops in LaCrosse, Tomah, Wisconsin Dells, Portage, Columbus, Milwaukee and Sturtevant. Amtrak is projecting that it will have 124,000 passengers use it this year.

South of the state line, in 2023, Metra and Union Pacific announced that Metra would launch two round trips per day from Chicago to Rockford beginning in 2027. Rockford has been lobbying for rail service since Amtrak stopped serving the city in 1981.

{p dir=”ltr”}”One of the things we’ve done in the past year is to get people from (the Wisconsin Department of Transportation) to testify before our committee about rail service and what we learned is Rock County is not on their radar screen,” Robson said. “We need to do new studies with updated numbers so we can be eligible to apply for grants. Once we get the study, we’ll know our options. Amtrak or Metra? What cities would be involved. It’s a long process with a lot of steps.”