Walker's hostility to Amtrak validated his blustery, anti-Obama, Tea Partyish "No Train...STOP the TRAIN" campaign website and pleased his SE Wisconsin right wing talk radio base - - but now an improvement plan for the Hiawatha could require...wait for it...buying a new train...built somewhere else.
So reports The Business Journal.
But a new train would not be not one of the two new Amtrak trains already built in Milwaukee for the Hiawatha line, and which sit unused and unavailable in a Milwaukee storage facility due to Walker's rejection of the federal funding that also included vital equipment to maintain the trains.
No maintenance facility here, no new trains for Wisconsin - - and Talgo, the manufacturer, is suing over the state's default on the train assembly and maintenance contract.
A default approved by the Legislature, syncing up politically with Walker.
The default put Walker's hard-edged "No Train...STOP the TRAIN" theme into practice.
Which leaves officials scrounging the Amtrak fleet for a hand-me-down train, or paying someone to build them a new train. For the Hiawatha line.
Like these Milwaukee-built, banned-in-Wisconsin trains now serving Oregon.
A new train to take advantage of record Hiawatha ridership between Milwaukee and Chicago (but not Madison, you Democratic, environmental stronghold).
All this in a state open for business [Sic] that had a promising train assembly facility - - see and read about two of the trains being enjoyed in Oregon - - and maintenance plant in a low-income Milwaukee neighborhood with high unemployment.
In a state where Walker is falling far short of the pace he needs to meet his signature pledge to create 250,000 new jobs.
Part of the blame for this fiasco is at the doorstep of the Milwaukee business community.
It backed Walker for Governor, which meant it stood with Walker's propaganda that the entire idea was overly-expensive and pro-Jim Doyle, then engaged in a little insincere charade joining Walker when he asked the Obama administration to return some of the money Walker dismissed to fund Milwaukee station upgrades the traveling Milwaukee business community wanted to enjoy.
The Obama administration took Walker at his "NO Train...STOP the TRAIN" word and said the money Walker had blocked had been re-allocated to more train-friendly states that knew how to keep their states' partnership pledges.
Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin.
