RACINE, Wis. — A new agency leading a revived and revised effort to develop passenger rail service between Kenosha, Wis., and Milwaukee has been launched. Tthe Milwaukee Area-Racine-Kenosha (MARK) Passenger Rail Commission held its first meeting last week in Racine.
The commission met Dec. 5 at Racine City Hall, the Racine County Eye reports, adopting bylaws, selecting officers, and approving steps in the pursuit of federal funds.
The new agency aims to shift the effort to launch service from a commuter rail approach to an intercity rail model, with fewer stops and faster service, commission members said during their first meeting. The service would use Union Pacific’s Kenosha Subdivision for most of its 33-mile route.
Other items on the agenda for the first meeting included approval of a Memorandum of Understanding with Metra, which would provide a connection between Chicago and MARK’s southern terminus in Kenosha via Metra’s UP North line, and approving an application to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program.
Efforts to develop the Kenosha-Milwaukee route date to 1998; the state legislature created the Southeastern Regional Transportation Authority to pursue the project in 2009, but that legislation was repealed in 2011. Various efforts to revive the project have surfaced since, most recently a 2022 proposal for a nine-station commuter line along the same route [see “Long-stalled Kenosha-Milwaukee commuter rail proposal …,” Trains.com, Aug. 23, 2022].
More information is available at the MARK website.
Four words:
(1) Cost
(2) Ridership
(3) Union
(4) Pacific
Assuming (which is four huge humungous assumptions) the rail proponents can make sense out of the first four words, something else comes to mind. How to get the trains from St. Francis into Milwaukee. Today’s UPRR in southern Milwaukee County isn’t the same railroad as CNW was in 1971 when the passenger trains last ran.
Moral of the story: find three cities on a map, pick up a sharpie, draw a line connecting, and VOILA!!!, passenger trains. Haven’t we found out yet that middle schoolers can pick up a sharpie, but no one could make this work.