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Chippewa Valley pushes for rail service
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| Commuters arrive in Milwaukee on the first day of Amtrack service from Watertown to Milwaukee in this April 1998 photo. Area business leaders would like to see such passenger rail service in the Chippewa Valley.
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By Ross Evavold
The Chippewa Herald
It is somewhat of a surprise that the Chippewa Valley is even in the state’s long-range rail plans.
Not because it doesn’t make sense. Connecting the Chippewa Valley to passenger rail service from the Twin Cities to Chicago makes perfect sense, certainly more than one suggested route that bypasses the Chippewa Valley in favor of a route through La Crosse.
After all, for many years the shortest route from Minneapolis to Chicago was through the Chippewa Valley on the Old 400, so named because it took a train 400 minutes to go between the two metropolitan hubs.
“It would be the most economical way to do it,” Ray Willoughby, co-chairman of the Chippewa Valley Intercity Passenger Rail Committee, said of connecting the Chippewa Falls-Eau Claire-Menomonie areas to high-speed rail.
But it almost didn’t happen. The Chippewa Valley was left out of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s original plans in 1991. The Midwest Rail Initiative, a collection of nine central states, defined the high-speed route through Wisconsin as following the Amtrak route from Madison to La Crosse, and then up the Mississippi River to St. Paul and Minneapolis.
This graphic shows alternative rail routes that would serve both the La Crosse area and the Chippewa Valley.
State Rep. Larry Balow (D-Eau Claire) said he questioned the route when he joined the Transportation Committee.
“The DOT said if we didn’t do something now, it would be cemented and there won’t be any change,” remembers Balow, who took those words back to the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce. Eau Claire joined with Menomonie and Chippewa Falls to make the issue a focal point of the annual Chippewa Valley Rally, letting state politicians know how important rail service was to the area.
“The Chippewa Valley Rally really made that an issue,” Balow said.
Enough pressure was put on the DOT that the agency went ahead and did another study. The second study showed that going through Eau Claire was the better option, Balow said.
Willoughby, president of American Bank in Eau Claire, was asked to chair a local rail committee. His personal relationship with then-Gov. Tommy Thompson came in handy.
“We were able to get the state to include the Old 400 as a potential route,” Willoughby said, crediting local pressure and a grassroots effort for getting back into the rail game.
In addition to passenger rail, the Chippewa Valley is also a viable candidate for commuter rail service, which would connect it to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The Twin Cities is just getting started with commuter rail service, with a line between the airport in Bloomington and downtown Minneapolis set to open this spring.
Typically Wisconsin’s counties that border Minnesota would be first in line, but the spread of the Twin Cities metro area continues to push outward.
Considering western Wisconsin is the state’s fastest-growing area, it’s not that big of a leap to imagine some day in the future commuter trains running as far as Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. At least that’s what Willoughby and others envision. And rail service would only help extend that rapid growth pattern out to Eau Claire and Chippewa counties.
Plans for the new Stillwater (Minn.) bridge include room for commuter rail into and out of the Twin Cities metro area. Willoughby, who has been working with the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, speculates that the Chippewa Valley may in fact see commuter rail before passenger rail.
“A substantial number of people in St. Croix County commute to the Twin Cities,” said Scott Rogers, a Chippewa Valley Intercity Passenger Rail Committee member. “There’s pressure on to provide a more reliable, less expensive, less time-consuming way to get there. But where would it start? At Hudson? Would it go farther east?”
The success of any initial system would help speed up an expansion effort that could reach out as far as 100 miles and rope in the Chippewa Valley.
Under either plan, bringing rail service to the Chippewa Valley won’t come quickly, or inexpensively. If at all.
“Federal funding is the big key,” Willoughby said. “We recognize that.”
“They’ve talked about commuter rail from Eau Claire to the Twin Cities. I did some investigating, and Amtrak would require a state subsidy,” said Balow.
Of course, the state or federal government isn’t in any position now to be handing out money.
“It’s like a lot of good ideas,” Rogers said. “There aren’t very many people who don’t think this is a good idea. But where is the money going to come from?”
“This is a long-range plan, totally based on federal funding,” Willoughby said.
Back to the future
The concept of passenger rail service through the Chippewa Valley is nothing new. The Old 400 route was active from 1935 to 1963, and featured a train billed as America’s fastest.
“I’ve talked to some of the old-timers, and they’ve told me that the biggest mistake we ever made was to let them discontinue that,” Balow said.
But that was roughly the time that the interstate was being completed through the state, and train travel was suffering at the expense of people driving themselves. Federal and state governments were plowing piles of public money into road construction.
“They were expecting private companies to do it (rail service) on their nickel,” Rogers said. “Because the investment wasn’t happening, the last few years they had only one train a day.”
“The feeling was I-94 was being built, and now we didn’t need the train anymore,” Balow said. “Looking back at it now, the train would have probably been a valuable tool.”
Rail would help economy
Bringing passenger rail service to the Chippewa Valley could impact many areas of life.
“The economic benefits would be huge,” Balow said.
Willoughby ticked off some benefits.
“Environmental — it will cut down on a lot of traffic congestion; it will allow people to get merchandise quicker from one place to another; businesses will crop up along the railroad if we can get some tax incentives,” he said.
“The economic situation would explode if we had commuter rail. You could be in Minneapolis in 45 minutes to work a job. With commuter rail, we could raise the wages almost overnight. That’s an area we need to work on.
“We’d sell a lot of homes, and I even think they would see some companies come in here. This would be like bringing in another Hutchinson and adding 2,400 people,” Willoughby said.
For those reasons and more, the Chippewa Valley Intercity Passenger Rail Committee has been holding monthly meetings throughout western Wisconsin to drum up support from other communities. In February they met in Hudson, and the next month in Black River Falls.
“Menomonie has come on board, and Chippewa Falls and Hudson,” Willoughby said. He said their challenge is having everything accounted for when funding becomes available.
“We want to be ready when they say go,” he said. “If you want to measure, let’s say we’re halfway there.”
Owen Ayres co-chairs the committee with Willoughby, and many others have contributed mightily to the planning.
“What’s interesting is how broad-based the support is,” Rogers said. “A lot of very well-thought-of people are the ones providing leadership and strong support on this.”
“If it weren’t for the vision of a group of business people, we wouldn’t be here today,” Willoughby said. “We have a number of people who are real savvy when it comes to railroads — people who have kept it alive.”
Timetable anyone’s guess
The DOT has folded the state rail plan into “Connections 2030,” a long-range plan. But local officials are hopeful they won’t have to wait 25 years for passenger rail service to come to the area.
“With the group we’ve got on this, and if we can team up with Minnesota, I can’t see any reason why in the next five to 10 years that this can’t become a reality,” said Balow. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work, and a lot of arm-twisting.
“One thing that is going to be in our favor over the next 10 to 15 years is the (highway) corridor is really filling up. The DOT knows that (I-94) is inadequate and they’re going to need a third lane. Why don’t we look at commuter rail to take the pressure off?”
Once again, it comes back to something that makes sense. But that isn’t enough in itself to make rail service a reality. Until government money becomes available, Willoughby says there is still work to do.
“It will happen faster the more people who get on board, and the more pressure that is put on the legislators — if we can keep our train rolling like we have it rolling now.”
Ross Evavold is editor of The Chippewa Herald in Chippewa Falls. Contact the Chippewa Valley Business Report at (715) 723-5515, or through www.chippewavalleybusinessreport.com.
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