After a 15-year effort to redesign public transportation in Madison, the city is weeks away from launching a bus rapid transit system that promises faster and more reliable service.
But for supporters of rail service in Madison, the moment is bittersweet. With millions more now invested in bus infrastructure, rail seems like an even dimmer possibility.
“Light rail is just extremely expensive and very difficult to work into tight constraints,” Justin Stuehrenberg, who oversees Madison Metro, recently told the Cap Times. “I think that's quite a ways off.”
More than a decade ago, Dane County leaders were close to establishing an agency that would coordinate transit planning and potentially bring back passenger rail services. However, those plans fell apart in 2011 when state lawmakers banned the regional transit agencies.
The county had estimated by 2020 a commuter rail system from Mazomanie to Sun Prairie could serve over 58,000 daily riders and a light rail system could serve over 61,000 daily riders.
In 2018, Madison leaders forged ahead with a more than $100 million plan to build a bus rapid transit system, with most of the construction and vehicle costs covered by federal funding. Plans for rail had lost steam amid worries it would be too expensive and logistically difficult to implement.
“Honestly, most of the (light rail systems) being built now are in old rail corridors, which in Madison is not where the density is concentrated. It's really challenging here,” Stuehrenberg said.
Middleton Mayor Emily Kuhn said bus rapid transit should fill the same transportation needs in her community that light rail would. She considers the new system, also known as BRT, a positive development to ease congestion on the west side.
“Whether you do light rail or BRT, they're fundamentally all the same,” Kuhn said. “What people don't fundamentally understand is it (doesn’t have to be) one or the other.”
Still, Kuhn said buses can carry only so many people and not using railways that bisect Madison for passenger services is a missed opportunity. Passenger rail on the tracks is not unprecedented, she said, noting that in the 1960s the tracks ferried Badger fans to and from Camp Randall Stadium.
“(Rail) gives you different options,” she said.
Light rail typically carries fewer people and travels shorter distances than commuter rail. Light rail in Madison would require new tracks. Commuter rail, meanwhile, could use tracks that carry freight trains through and around the Madison area.
Railways in the Madison area are owned by the state and leased to the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad. Ken Lucht, a top official at Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, said the company has twice submitted proposals to Madison and Dane County leaders about sharing the tracks.
“We can move freight service to the evening and overnight hours and move the passenger trains during the daytime hours,” Lucht said.
But Lucht said officials have rejected the idea over cost concerns.
Marty Krueger, who chairs a state board that oversees state-owned tracks near Madison, said there was openness to the idea of sharing the track. But there hasn’t been a substantive discussion on the issue in over a decade. Logistics, such as balancing freight and passenger schedules and insurance, would be challenging.
“It’s more complicated than it looks, than just putting a train on the tracks,” Krueger said.
More than a decade ago, the city and county asked the University of Wisconsin-Madison to explore the feasibility of a sprawling commuter rail system in Dane County, but the university's report did not weigh in on whether the idea would work.
Former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz took office in 2003 amid heated debates over public transportation and whether the county should establish a tax-funded regional transit authority. While he advocated for building a streetcar system at the time, he now sees bus rapid transit as clearly Madison’s future.
“To layer in a rail system on top of that, in a community our size that's growing this fast, is a little bit unrealistic for the next decade or two,” he said. “In the long run, if we keep growing at this pace, then I think it could be revisited. But I think we're going to have to figure out how BRT works out and it's going to be a few years before BRT is even built out.”
The bus rapid transit system’s east-west line is set to launch in September. City leaders are still determining the routes and other details of a federally funded north-south route, planned for 2028.
Cieslewicz said he is hopeful bus rapid transit will bring about the same positive changes he believed streetcars could accomplish. He attributes much of that optimism to city planning that now allows for more housing to be built on busy transit corridors.
“It wasn't just about a way to move people. It was a way to redevelop the city at greater densities. Some of that — maybe much of that — hopefully will be accomplished by BRT because they really use the same philosophy,” Cieslewicz said. “I think BRT is going to be a historic improvement.”
Cieslewicz is more skeptical of the future of rail in Dane County without a regional transit authority that county leaders once sought and is now banned under state law. Republican lawmakers prohibited the agencies as part of efforts to limit taxing.
“I don't think anything's going to happen now with light rail or an expansion of a bus service further into the county until we get a regional transit authority,” Cieslewicz said.
The most recent expansion of passenger rail service near Madison involved a new route launched by Amtrak in May that links Chicago and Minnesota. In its first month of operation, the route served 18,500 riders, or about 300 people per train each day, according to Amtrak.
The nearest station for the route is located in Columbus, about 30 miles from downtown Madison.
Madison leaders are exploring where an Amtrak stop could be placed in the city with hopes of connecting to Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and beyond. City officials have narrowed down a list of potential sites to eight locations, most being downtown or east of downtown.
Allison Garfield joined the Cap Times in 2021 and covers local government. She graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in journalism and previously worked as a government watchdog reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and was the state capitol intern for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Andrew Bahl joined the Cap Times in September 2023, covering Wisconsin politics and government. He is a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum and has covered state government in Pennsylvania and Kansas.
You can follow Andrew and Allison on X @AndrewBahl and@aligarfield_.
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