WisARP meeting, La Crosse WI, October 27

Beginning at 10 am, at the La Crosse Radisson, 200 Harborview Plaza, in La Crosse.  As with the All Aboard Wisconsin Meeting, the general public is invited to attend.  

NARP & MWHSRA combination meeting, and WisARP Fall meeting:

The National Association of Rail Passengers will be holding a meeting in conjunction with the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, in Milwaukee, on October 20.  It will be held at the Hilton City Center, just a couple of blocks away from the Milwaukee train station.  It begins at 10:00 AM.

"All Aboard Wisconsin" First formal community forum, October 23, Eau Claire, WI

There will be the first formal community forum of "All Aboard Wisconsin" held in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at 7 PM at the Chippewa Valley Technical College.  Clairemont Business Education Center, 620 W.  Clairemont Ave., Eau Claire, WI 54701.

Go around to the north side of the building.

"Where do you want to go by Train ? "

7:00 - 9:00 PM Tue, Oct. 23, 2012

Chippewa Valley Technical College – Clairemont Campus Business Education Center Commons 620 West Clairemont Avenue, Eau Claire, WI 54701 (north side)
CHIPPEWA VALLEY area residents! Please join ALL ABOARD WISCONSIN at a Community Forum in Eau Claire to discuss the role of passenger trains in Wisconsin’s future. This is the second in a series of Community Forums we are hosting throughout Wisconsin. Our goal: to engage citizens in thoughtful, informed conversations about our transportation choices in the coming decades.
YOUR involvement is needed to help develop a statewide plan which includes intercity passenger train service – in conjunction with efficiently coordinated, handicap-accessible connections to other transportation choices like air travel, bus service, taxi, auto, and municipal transit.
ALL ABOARD WISCONSIN is an alliance of organizations and individuals promoting passenger trains and connecting transportation choices statewide as an integral part of Wisconsin’s and the nation’s travel network. In this Forum we’ll provide an overview of our existing transportation system, consider potential routes and destinations, and provide a big-picture vision

of our passenger train future! 

For more information:  All Aboard Wisconsin twitter feed.  Or, Western Wisconsin rail coalition.

All Aboard Wisconsin Public forum, May 10 2012

The general public is invited to attend and participate in an information forum, to be held in Oshkosh, WI, at the Sheriff's Office Building.  This is to be the first of a series of fora held across Wisconsin, and is to inform and engage the general public in thoughtful discussion regarding the future of transportation choices in Wisconsin.  There will be a concentration upon passenger trains, and adding more service throughout the state.  From 6:30 - 8:30 pm, May 10.  Come one, come all.

Winnebago County Sheriff's Office Bldg., 4311 Jackson St., Oshkosh, WI, in the Richard Meyer Community Resources Room.  Please attend.

Wisconsin Association of Rail Passengers Spring meeting

The next meeting of WisARP will be March 31, at the Hilton City Center, in downtown Milwaukee. 501 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee. 10 am - 3 pm. Come one, come all.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/legislators-buck-walker-reject-train-maintenance-base-bg4isr4-142671085.html

We in Wisconsin continue to pay for Walker's decision to reject the train funding. So far, this means the decision to reject the train funding has now cost the Wisconsin taxpayers over $ 900 million. We should recall walker for this decision.

All_Aboard_Wisconsin next meeting

Tentatively scheduled for March 19, 1:30 pm, at the Inn On The Park in downtown Madison. If you're interested, and wish to make your views known in a constructive fashion, you're invited to come.

All_Aboard_Wisconsin meeting

There will be a meeting on February 28, 10 am, at the Wisconsin Council of The blind, in Madison. All who are interested in trains, and can offer constructive help, are invited to attend.

"The Great High Speed Rail Lie"

"The Great High Speed Rail Lie." at SFGate.com:

Some excerpts:

"In 2008, voters approved a $10 billion bond to begin construction of a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco that would make that trip in less than three hours. So who knew that by 2011 the general consensus would be that the project is an ill-conceived, mismanaged boondoggle?

Former Amtrak spokesman and Reason Foundation writer Joseph Vranich knew."

"So what's going on here?

It's simple. Vranich makes stuff up. Adrianne Moore, vice president of policy at the Reason Foundation, says the Europeans are abandoning rail in favor of driving and flying. Nonsense."

"The Reason Foundation is funded by Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, the American Petroleum Institute, Delta Airlines, the National Air Transportation Association and, of course, the Koch Family Foundation. They know what will happen once Americans, furious about gas prices and the way airlines treat them, experience electrically powered 200-mph trains. But big oil and aviation can't attack high-speed rail directly - that would be an obvious attempt to abort competition. So they hire a "think tank."

Reason collaborates on research with James Moore III, a transportation engineering professor at University of Southern California. They parrot Reason's "train to nowhere" nonsense, a phrase they apply to all rail projects. It's especially absurd in this case, because interim services will have high-speed rail trains slow and reach the Bay Area on existing rail lines. Reason's minions claim there's no business plan or ridership figures. Except that anyone can go on the California High-Speed Rail Authority website and download them."

"A modern 200-mile-per-hour rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco will change America's transportation paradigm. Just like in Europe and Asia, California will develop a profitable system joining all its cities. Nearby states, such as Nevada and Arizona, will link into the network, just like European countries did after France established its network. Jet airplanes will be used for what they were intended: long-distance travel. Automobile use will be reduced. This will save millions of barrels of oil. And that's the real reason these lobbyists want it stopped."

This is what we will continue to face in the future. The opposition rhetoric will find fertile ground among those who have never ridden aboard a train. It will be up to us to counter this rhetoric with our own.

A brief update:

Seeing as how this website administrator hasn't been diligent in his duties, I will allow for a short update on some activities. The Scott Walker Recall will happen. It is up to us to make his refusal of the funds for the Madison extension an issue. There have been a series of meetings of a group that intends to get more public involvement in future rail efforts. There will continue to be a push for getting funds to reintroduce passenger rail to Madison. We haven't let this project die -- it has just gone underground for a while. We also must consider future service through Madison to a some sort of upgraded, higher conventional speed rail service, and not HSR. HSR is becoming tainted by the events surrounding the California project, and we must take steps to avoid being tainted.

See also "How to talk to a detractor about 'high speed' rail"

This website administrator also thinks that the Obama Administration has made some serious errors in their roll-out of train improvements. One of the errors being that Obama made the entire thing a target by stating his wish that higher speed trains be a legacy of his Administration. When the Republicans ( and Tea Partiers ) got a whiff of that, they put a big target on HSR. Obama may have set train improvement efforts back by a decade with this poor effort.

Edit: The PDF addressing 37 different criticisms leveled at the recent Passenger rail improvements can be found here.