Comment by briffle

The Obama Administration tried to build high speed rail from Chicago to Madison, WI. It was supposed to be the first segment that would eventually extend to the twin cities. They have $700M dedicated to it. Then WI had an election for governor, and the incoming Republican (Scott Walker) managed to somehow conflate high speed inter-city rail with 'light rail' and scrapped it. He claimed it was too expensive, since the state would have to spend $7Million or so each year for their part of the maintenance (even though the feds were going to fully fund construction). After Scrapping it, the State then had to pay $90Million to upgrade the tracks between Chicago and Milwaukee (that was going to be paid for) and then had to pay $40M for the high speed Talgo Trains. Plus, Talgo moved their US headquarters from Milwaukee to Chicago.