Wisconsin GOP officials have for years blocked a variety of rail lines and transit services that could have helped create and connect jobs to desperately-needed development.
Those short-sighted politicians' day of reckoning is fast approaching.
* I noted yesterday how right-wing GOP WI Governor Scott Walker's foolish blockade of an Amtrak extension from SE Wisconsin to Madison and the rest of Midwestern inter-city rail expansion removed connections which would have fed potential employment for high-tech Foxconn should it build a mega-factory in Racine County.
I also wrote last week that right-wing and fellow Walkerite transit foe GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was using the possible Foxconn project's trucking needs to press Walker to fund a faster completion of I-94 re-construction and expansion through Racine County which is Vos' home base and the heavily-rumored site for the Foxconn factory.
But as I documented Walker's short-sighted blockade of the Amtrak extension, let's give Vos's one-note opposition to transit which can bring workers more easily to their jobs especially if they do not have cars or care to spend hours everyday on congested highways or potholed roads on what has been rated America's second-worst state roads:also it's due
* Vos got the 2011 legislature to ban regional transit authorities, which, by the way, has effectively blocked the construction of a commuter rail line linking Kenosha, Racine (Vos' home county) and Milwaukee counties, thus denying his own constituents rail services that also was to include am easy transfer to Chicago's METRA commuter service.
That proposed KRM line would have been a great selling point to Foxconn: 'Look - - we can bring workers and contacts and and visitors between Milwaukee and Chicago to your doorstep!' Oh, Vos! Never mind.
* The wipeout of RTA's also made it harder in general for transit services to be coordinated across County and jurisdictional boundaries, as I noted in 2016 when Vos was ramping up his campaign against transit by proposing (unsuccessfully, but it's a sure tell about his views), the removal of transit funding from the state transportation budget (more dedicated dollars for the road-builders), and making transit compete for regular state financing with other "social services."
Those short-sighted politicians' day of reckoning is fast approaching.
* I noted yesterday how right-wing GOP WI Governor Scott Walker's foolish blockade of an Amtrak extension from SE Wisconsin to Madison and the rest of Midwestern inter-city rail expansion removed connections which would have fed potential employment for high-tech Foxconn should it build a mega-factory in Racine County.
I also wrote last week that right-wing and fellow Walkerite transit foe GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was using the possible Foxconn project's trucking needs to press Walker to fund a faster completion of I-94 re-construction and expansion through Racine County which is Vos' home base and the heavily-rumored site for the Foxconn factory.
But as I documented Walker's short-sighted blockade of the Amtrak extension, let's give Vos's one-note opposition to transit which can bring workers more easily to their jobs especially if they do not have cars or care to spend hours everyday on congested highways or potholed roads on what has been rated America's second-worst state roads:also it's due
* Vos got the 2011 legislature to ban regional transit authorities, which, by the way, has effectively blocked the construction of a commuter rail line linking Kenosha, Racine (Vos' home county) and Milwaukee counties, thus denying his own constituents rail services that also was to include am easy transfer to Chicago's METRA commuter service.
That proposed KRM line would have been a great selling point to Foxconn: 'Look - - we can bring workers and contacts and and visitors between Milwaukee and Chicago to your doorstep!' Oh, Vos! Never mind.
* The wipeout of RTA's also made it harder in general for transit services to be coordinated across County and jurisdictional boundaries, as I noted in 2016 when Vos was ramping up his campaign against transit by proposing (unsuccessfully, but it's a sure tell about his views), the removal of transit funding from the state transportation budget (more dedicated dollars for the road-builders), and making transit compete for regular state financing with other "social services."
...GOP Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, (R-Rochester, Racine County)...tried in the last state budget now that he is Assembly Speaker to further starve transit by removing it altogether from the state transportation fund - - a dream of the road-builders, for sure...considers transit "a social service."
Vos began to make his mark as Wisconsin Public Transit Enemy #1 or #2 ( remember, Walker is in charge) as a mere Assemblyman four years ago when he pushed the State Legislature to war counties from creating Regional Transit Authorities.
So more regional connections were barred and lost to counties, including Milwaukee - - just like what was sacrificed on a grander scale when Walker blocked new rail connections between Milwaukee, Madison and the Twin Cities when he successfully rejected $810 million in federal stimulus funds to add Amtrak services, rail bed upgrades, plus train assembly and maintenance jobs in Milwaukee, too.* As I wrote in 2012, after Vos made his move against the RTA's:
Transit has been outright attacked in the region, led by State Rep. Robin Vos. a legislator from Racine County, a SEWRPC County.
Wisconsin legislators, with the full support of the Waukesha County delegations, used the 2011-2013 state budget to wipe out cooperative, cross-jurisdictional Regional Transit Authorities, which affirmed the anti-transit, anti-Milwaukee position taken by Waukesha's County Board when it refused to join such a body that could have more closely aligned services with Milwaukee.
If Foxconn were to build a 10,000-employee factory in Racine County, there would be a need for extensive transit coordination among Racine, Kenosha, Milwaukee counties to help move unprecedented numbers of people in and out of the Racine area.
The very transit authorities Vos helped kill are the perfect method for that coordination, and also provide new development and business opportunity at stations and transfer points.
* But as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said in a 2013 editorial, Vos helped ban the authorities and has not followed through on a plan to recreate them:
The very transit authorities Vos helped kill are the perfect method for that coordination, and also provide new development and business opportunity at stations and transfer points.
* But as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said in a 2013 editorial, Vos helped ban the authorities and has not followed through on a plan to recreate them:
In 2011, the state killed the ability of local governments to form regional transit authorities, which could have helped those governments deal with serious challenges to their transit systems. One would have thought that allowing governments to cooperate and consolidate for better service and less cost to taxpayers would have appealed to legislators, especially Republican legislators who often tout the virtues of giving more control and options to local governments.
Not so. Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), now the Assembly's speaker, was a co-sponsor of that bill. He told us at the time that the RTAs then in existence were put together badly and he wanted to repeal them and start over with an honest policy debate. That hasn't happened, and we think the real reason for the move was to nail down the coffin lid on a proposal to build commuter rail connecting Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha....
Transit is not, as Vos and others have argued, a social service. It's an economic development tool that can attract workers and jobs. As such, it should be part of a transportation network that gives workers and families a variety of options for getting around the area. Ideally, it should, along with a strong road network, help connect them not only to jobs, but to shopping, recreational and entertainment venues...
Regional transportation authorities can help local governments deal with those issues, providing better service at less cost. Those governments should at the very least have that option available to them. Let's have that honest debate in 2014, Mr. Speaker.But even with the biggest development opportunity in years perhaps a possibility in Vos' district, even with a transportation budget and overall two-year state spending blueprint still not yet written through 209, and with Republicans Vos and Walker in key 'leadership' positions in the legislature the GOP controls, don't bet on that conversation or implementation taking place, because in Walker and Vos' Wisconsin, ideology continually trumps common sense.