By Emma Sauriol
As gas prices continue to rise around the State of Wisconsin, a conversation is sparked
about bringing a passenger rail train between Green Bay and Milwaukee.
According to Wis-A-RP, the time to bring regular passenger rail trains is now.
It has been more than 50 years since these types of trains have run to Green Bay and the Fox Cities.
These trains are planned to stop in cities such as Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, and Appleton, but could take more than a year to be considered by the Feds to apply for the funding of this project as well as an additional 6 to 10 years to actually get the corridor operational.
Tracks in Milwaukee and Neenah have the capability of max speeds up to 79 miles per hour but
signals would need to be upgraded to reach those speeds on the tracks out to Green Bay.
According to the Amtrak Director of Government Affairs for the Midwest, Derrick James, he says
that the federal government will start gauging interest in May to see which areas of the country
would be willing to help make the investment in new passenger rail corridors.
As first stated on Fox 11 News, at the moment it is unclear how much this project would cost but there is an opportunity with $66 billion designated for rail and Amtrak in the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
This train ride from Green Bay to Milwaukee would take about 2 hours and 50 minutes but
according to Google, taking a car is more than an hour faster with an estimated time at about 1
hour and 45 minutes.
