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.
