Walker's High Speed Rail Debacle continues...

The high speed rail debacle will not fade away anytime soon, thanks to Scott Walker’s continued spending on rail projects that will cost taxpayers dearly. Not only is he trying to buy rail lines that were included in the high speed train deal, but he’s buying trains that are too small to handle all the passengers needed to go between Milwaukee and Chicago. Of course no one is complaining now about the future costs of maintaining the trains, station and tracks, the reason Republicans used to kill the high speed rail plans.

For me and others who back the project, the reasons conservative voters gave to kill the project were crazy. Future maintenance cost was big with them, even though the federal government would have picked up a majority of those costs.

Now we have to pay more for, and deal with the fall out of a bad decision that pushed Walker into the governorship.

jsonline: Gov. Scott Walker's administration is pushing to move forward with a $55 million to $63 million Milwaukee train maintenance base - even though a state analysis suggests it might be cheaper to mothball two brand-new trains and keep using Amtrak-owned equipment … state transportation officials concede the new trains, which already have cost the state $71.8 million, are probably too small to handle the fast-growing ridership on Amtrak's Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line … That means the state might need to buy more train cars from the Spanish-owned manufacturer Talgo - a fact buried deep in the administration's report to a legislative committee, and apparently not factored into any cost analysis.

Hey tight wad conservative taxpayers, have your radio talk hosts complained about this outrageous new spending?

Amtrak says the Hiawatha ridership grew 4% to a record 823,163, the first time it cracked the 800,000 mark. For lawmakers, the choice will be whether to follow a course that is costing more than expected or to walk away … walking away from an $810 million federal grant that could have covered some of these costs.

Here’s the clincher that proves just how bad Republicans are at running the government.

And without the federal grant, the state had to cover the costs of the temporary and permanent maintenance facilities. Because of the loss of federal aid, a Journal Sentinel analysis last year found the state could wind up paying more to keep the current Milwaukee-to-Chicago service than it would have paid if the service had been extended to Madison.