Our Hatred of Trains is killing our local economy

Last Saturday, my wife had an epiphany. She has discovered the fact that I have been railing about (pun intended) that economies that do not adapt to peak oil by adopting sustainable transportation in the form of trains are losers. Up to yesterday, my daughters and her laughed at my obsession with rail transport and the history of our once strong southeast Wisconsin rail transportation network that has disappeared or fallen into branch line freight rail only decrepitude. My family’s first ride to downtown Chicago on Metra commuter rail changed that quickly.




Daughter and Friend at Harvard Illinois Metra Station.

A scene you won't see in Wisconsin, the state of Automobiles uber Alles.

More below the fold to see how trains can help our local economies in an age of expensive oil.

The story begins with one of my daughter’s favorite bands, the Plain White T’s. Originally, my wife and daughter, with a friend, planned to go hear them at Summerfest in Milwaukee. A quick check of the band’s schedule indicated that they were also playing at Taste of Chicago. Now, to go to Summerfest, it is a 50 mile drive from my house, which would require burning 5 gallons of gasoline which would cost $23 at todays prices (my wife’s car uses higher grade gasoline). Plus, parking would cost a minimum of $10. Additionally, there were the tickets to go see the band, which cost $16 apiece. That brings the out of pocket costs to nearly $80 or more, not including food. We looked at going to the Taste of Chicago instead. The Metra schedule worked out and the price to travel downtown worked out to a paltry $5. Metra weekend pass and the kids traveled free. Free trolleys run from the Metra station in downtown Chicago to the Taste of Chicago. Think if we had preserved the T, M, E, and RL interurbans, we could have gone to East Troy or Burlington, or even Lake Geneva (the original intent was to expand the electrified rail to that point) and done the same thing in Wisconsin.

Instead, my wife took the short 12 mile drive to Harvard, Illinois and hopped the train with my two daughters and one of my daughter’s friends. The icing on the cake was that the food coupons for the Taste of Chicago also paid admission to see the band. Total tab for 4 people for this event; $37.50, and that included an $5 cab fare back to the train station in Chicago and $1.50 to park at the Harvard train station. It also included plenty of food! My family was impressed at how well the train ran, the ride, and meeting different people. They want to go again!

Needless to say, our money and our time went to Chicago and not Milwaukee, thanks to the availability of the train. My wife and kids probably would have still gone to Chicago even if the admission to the concert was the same price, because who needs traffic and parking hassles, and $30 to be exported out of the region (with over 60 percent of that out of the country in the form of oil imports). The money would stay in the local economy if we had the trains that existed 50 years ago.

Now lets do a little exercise: Lets assume Wisconsin politicians and elites were a little more enlightened and a little less parochial, and a concerted effort was made to save the old Chicago and Northwestern line to Lake Geneva, and it’s beautiful historic train depot, razed in 1986 despite its placement on the national register of historic places, and Walworth County were part of the RTA. Lake Geneva would have a Metra station like Harvard, Illinois. We would be having people coming to and from Chicago by rail to Lake Geneva, and many of the hundreds of cars currently clogging the downtown would be left at home. The weekend tourists would be paying the $5 per person to come up by train. The average vehicle would cost $28-30 dollars in current fuel costs just for the fuel to go from Chicago to Lake Geneva, while a family of 4 with two young children would only pay $10 to ride the train. This would free up 18-20 dollars for that family to spend in the local economy rather than on fuel, or even make it possible for them to come in the first place. Assume 3 8-coach trains come up every weekend day and are 4/5 full. That would bring in 3000 people not driving, and with an average cost savings of 50% over driving, would conservatively free up about $5-10 per person to spend in the local economy (more for those traveling singly or couples) which would pump up to $30,000.00 into the local tourist economy each weekend day. Note that this does not include the well-paid jobs that would have stayed in the region for conductors, train engineers, and track construction and maintenance.

Almost everyone I talk to now in the region wants rails to be expanded and brought back. Short sighted decisions in the era of cheap gasoline and muscle cars do not need to be defended. The “freedom of the car” is now a financial albatross around our collective necks, as the above discussion proves, and the southeast Wisconsin and Walworth County transportation status quo is indefensible, no matter what the Waukesha papers, Randal O’Toole, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan or the other cheap labor conservative Republican politicians and transportation “consultants” that dominate our local politics say. That trains are wasteful is another myth that needs to be relegated to the dustbin of history along with the Ptolemaic astronomical model.

Endorsements for April 1, 2008 Election!

We have lots of ideas about how the county can be made more sustainable, and self reliant. We wish that local citizens could implement these ideas on their own, but unfortunately, most of us do not have the financial resources and wherewithal to push these on a larger scale. The cost of land alone precludes the preservation of open space and groundwater, let alone investing in the infrastructure of sustainable transportation, development, and renewable energy without either lots of private monies or a tough, progressive regulatory environment from local and state government that pushes these policies.

Currently, we have a system by which the powers that be, public and private, profit from a status quo system that fails to acknowledge local ecological and resource limits (groundwater, physical space), as well as global issues such as peak oil and climate change. Most of the big money is on big boxes and auto-dependent sprawl type developments such as Jackson Creek in Delavan Township and the Mirbeau-Hummel development on the south side of Lake Geneva (the latter has made a few concessions to some green development principles due to citizen pressure). Therefore, unfortunately, we have to pay attention to the officials we elect and the referendums we vote for to get some change and push us away from becoming Crystal Lake and Lake in the Hills North (without commuter trains and transit buses).

That brings us to Sustainable Walworth's endorsements for the April 1 political contests. These include county board, local village, township and city offices as well as the statewide governor veto referendum, the Mirbeau-Hummel development referendum for Lake Geneva, and the Supreme Court race.

First of all, our endorsements for the statewide races:

Louis Butler for supreme court: His opponent Gableman is bankrolled by the most reactionary big money lobbying outfit in the state, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), staunch defender of powerful economic interests, increased corporate power, and the fossil fools in state and national government. Gableman has also run a dirty campaign based on innuendo, half truths and race baiting, with some of this invective paid for by WMC. Therefore we endorse Louis Butler.

Governor Partial Veto: We advocate voting NO on this referendum, keeping the power of the veto pen as it is. Reactionaries in the state Assembly want carte blanche to push through their disgusting legislation and derail commonsense items such as the Great Lakes Compact. Its funny that they wanted the partial veto when Republicans, including Tommy Thompson controlled the governor’s office and blew up the budget (anyone remember Klauser and his bloated department of administration?)

Local Referendum:

Mirbeau-Hummel – The developers of this project, upon considerable public resistance, have tried to make this project more green by clustering, open space, and some natural area restoration. However, there are too many other things wrong with this project, including lack of specificity in state of the art green building and landscaping practices, likely increases in water usage and runoff, and increased traffic and pollution impacts from what is likely to be several thousand new cars in the area. There is also not enough mixed use – where are the local food sources? Layouts that require significant auto usage. The project projects full build out in 25 years, at which time our oil resource is projected to be severely constrained as we will be past peak in oil production worldwide. Therefore we advocate voting NO on Mirbeau Hummel. Send it back to the drawing board and redesign it for the realities of peak oil.

County Board Races:

District 1 – No enthusiastic endorsement. Neither candidate seems to be addressing sustainability issues. Mr. Muzatko appears to be supporting the status quo. His opponent Rick Stacey wants to streamline zoning and regulation, which could lead to even more sprawl and inappropriate development.

District 2 – Joe Schaefer. He supports protection of natural areas and open space. His opponent Bill Norem supports expansion of large businesses and industry into the county, which could be problematic depending on which businesses come in and whether they would take the tax breaks and run. We are pro-good jobs and economic development, but only where there are environmental and conservation benefits as well (green industry).

District 3 – Ann Lohrmann – Endorsed for desire to address cheap labor economy in the county, bringing in high tech, emphasis on educational issues, and preservation of rural areas.

District 4 – No endorsement – Both candidates seem to want to support status quo – expand tourism (cheap labor and more traffic – I would be more enthusiastic if we had trains or other public transit to bring in the tourists) and liable to decline with peak oil, and “increasing the tax base” without specifics as to how. We all know that many forms of development, while creating short term increases to the tax base, create many costly long-term environmental and economic externalities.

District 5 – No endorsement. Lukewarm candidate platforms.

District 6 – No clear endorsement. Both candidates both want growth to be controlled and responsible, and appear to be open to suggestions on this topic and on keeping/making the county more sustainable.

District 7. Sonja Berg-Schlesner – Clear endorsement here. The incumbent David Weber appears to be supporting the same old status quo stuff, which is the creeping transformation of the county into the typical Chicago sprawlburb. Ms. Schlesner is clearly thinking outside of the box, which is refreshing. She is the only candidate who specifically is advocating for bringing in renewable energy development, and tackling environmental problems in particular. The economy of the future is in addressing these areas. She has a scientific background in conservation biology, which is a refreshing change in government over the same old myopic small-town boosters that typically enter local government.

District 8- Dan Kilkenny. He has expressed interest in smart growth, serving on the Smart Growth Tech Advisory Board and with water/sewer issues, being involved in the Delavan Lake Sanitary District. His opponent Jerry Waelti was a vice president of the Wisconsin Asphalt Pavement Association, standing for Auto-Petroleum industrial complex, Status quo. Kilkenny for District 8.

District 9 - No endorsement. Both candidates fall short. One (Bob Carlson) is a lawn care company owner, which is not a sustainable industry. The second (Jim Van Dreser) says we need growth in residential (demand destruction from no local jobs and peak oil) and retail development (again not future-sustainable and a cheap labor base). Nothing very exciting here.

District 10- Pauline Parker. Not a clear cut difference between the candidates; however she seems more concerned with the environmental aspect of the county and preserving agriculture, which is critical when long-distance food transport becomes uneconomic due to the effects of peak oil.

District 11 – Nancy Russell. Advocates for our water resources, which is highly critical in this lakes region. Her opponent is running for both County Board and Mayor of Lake Geneva. Lake Geneva residents should vote for her opponent, Spyro (Speedo) Condos for mayor of Lake Geneva (not County Board) over his mayoral opponent Bill Chesen, since he is opposed to Mirbeau-Hummel and rampant annexation and expansion of the city boundaries (read cancerous growth). Chesen appears to be firmly within the box of conventional wisdom, a position we cannot afford to take these days.

REMEMBER TO VOTE ON APRIL 1!

In our next post, we will tackle an analysis of Mirbeau-Hummel and why we oppose it. This analysis can be also used as a method to critique other large-scale mixed development projects.

Back to Basics

Back to Basics


I have resided in Walworth County for the last ten years, and like any area on the edge of an expanding megapolitan region at the tail end of the oil age, we are at a crossroads. Our county’s unique resources and amenities can be preserved through sustainable and local development (as in economize, localize and produce), or we can retain a cheap-labor, environmentally degrading, extractive economy dependent on the whims of outside forces and a declining petroleum resource, as our current path is dictating to us. I have spoken with many friends and they feel the same way I do.

This is why I have become interested in starting a Sustainable Walworth blog, with the hopes of eventually kick-starting a Sustainable Walworth movement in which we celebrate and preserve our unique character and give hope to the next generation. This aims to be a clearinghouse of ideas, independent thought and discussion as to how to sustain ourselves. Walworth County is a special place because of our beautiful lakes and countryside, environmental resources, ample agricultural base, potentially vital small towns, and potential of access to the culture of urban centers in Chicago and Milwaukee. We need to emphasize ways to preserve and enhance these special things.

Why do we need a new direction? I write this as the cost of basics (food, energy and shelter), and our dependency on the external economy to provide them, skyrockets each year, consistently outpacing the average rate of inflation. Energy is shipped in via massive power lines from off-site coal-fired and nuclear plants. Our transportation system in Walworth County is nearly completely dependent on the personal automobile and trucking paradigm, with the exception of a few decrepit, lightly used freight rail lines. Public transit is non-existent as the last passenger commuter rail service was discontinued in the early 80’s, and public bus transit exists only in the form of a few resort shuttles in Lake Geneva, despite a population that exceeds 30,000 within a ten-mile radius in the center of the county and a massive influx of tourists in the summer and on weekends. In spite of our plentiful, fertile farmland, most food is shipped in, with the exception of a few farm stands in summer. The money spent on energy and food is largely shipped out of the region or even out of the country to fill the coffers of the utility industry, the oil companies, car companies, and suppliers of oil imports, and daily drains the pockets of our citizens and leaves the local economy. A retail and service-dependent cheap labor economy forces our citizens to go elsewhere for gainful employment, racheting up our dependence on expensive energy and road-based transport.

It is time we rebuild our local economy and ecology. Our county has substantial potential to provide basic needs through its local economy for its citizens, without resorting to this over-dependence on external sources. Rich farmland has the potential to provide our citizens with excellent, locally grown foodstuffs. Many areas have the basic infrastructure in place (railroad tracks or centerlines of existing road beds), which can be upgraded to begin a shift to transportation alternatives, and many locations have the potential to produce local, clean energy through wind, solar and in a few locations, small hydropower. Re-tooling our existing developments in the right way and providing sustainability guidelines for new development will help conserve our water resources, and the quality of our lakes and streams, and promote a greater sense of community. This will provide the added benefit of helping to preserve our region as a tourist destination, which is one of the main engines of our county economy.

Unfortunately, it seems that many recent trends in our county are aping those of the sprawl suburbs of Chicago and Milwaukee, particularly Waukesha County. Developers with deep pockets are buying up vast chunks of land with the hopes of cramming in large, high profit developments – local sentiments and environmental quality be damned. Such developers are attempting to use money and influence to play off local governments against each other, or insert themselves into small entities, such as townships, that lack the resources to regulate them. Developers with deep pockets are also salivating over the remaining undeveloped lake front land, large open spaces, and natural areas, and we have no funded mechanism for land conservation like the forest preserve and conservation districts of our neighbors to the south.

As a result of this trend, lake watersheds are becoming overdeveloped and runoff from this development is compromising our crown jewels such as Geneva Lake and Delavan Lake. The county picks on easy targets such as small homeowners and contractors, while allowing deep-pocket developers to chop up virgin land such as the recent destruction of one of the last high-quality remnant wooded slopes above the Lauderdale Lakes chain. Vast sums of cash were expended to rehabilitate Delavan Lake nearly 20 years ago and now runoff from development and inappropriate land use has degraded the lake to an algae-choked state similar to its condition before restoration. Part of this is due to the pavement and impermeable surfaces that are becoming ever more frequent, with poor quality stormwater management.

The paving of the county is also evidenced by Lake Geneva traffic gridlock throughout the summer and on many weekends, no thanks to the removal of passenger rail access in the 1970s that could now be reducing the congestion and pumping more money into our local economy. This traffic gridlock is, according to the Wisconsin DNR, contributing to local air quality that trips the non-attainment levels mandated by the U.S. EPA. The standard auto-dependent big box stores have popped up, and traffic lights and jams are sprouting up like weeds. We are moving towards Crystal Lake style congestion, without the Metra trains that they are fortunate to still have, or even worse, Waukesha County, which is slated to hit 500,000 souls in the near future, nearly all of whom will be clogging the roads with their personal cars thanks to the knee-jerk resistance of local politicians to trains. Even the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, who should know better as a public, non-partisan planning agency, fails to think outside the car box, with flawed studies dismissing commuter railroad extensions to the county, and a long range plan that includes new road construction and highways. These flawed studies are based on usage demand assuming inflation-adjusted gasoline prices at $2.35 a gallon through the year 2030. As we all know, gasoline prices have exceeded this price by nearly 50 percent, and most sources studying peak oil indicate peak oil will have long since happened by 2030. Unless we can wean ourselves off the black crack, the downslope from peak oil is likely to lead to ever-increasing fuel prices above and beyond the general inflation rate.

Our petroleum dependency is also shown in our landscapes. Lake and stream front property owners are improperly applying pesticides, clearing native vegetation, planting invasive species, or overusing the turf lawn, which contributes to global warming, wasteful use of oil, and general mis-allocation of resources. All the while, as our environment degrades and it becomes harder and harder to keep up with the cost of necessities, our state, local and federal politicians dither and obsess about god, guns and gays, while neglecting the basic, everyday bread and butter issues.

I have two school age children, and not to sound trite, leave Walworth County to them as good or better a place as what I know now. We need to think outside of the box that the powers that be are putting us in, or they will inherit a worse place.

How to get us out of this mess? We have the ability to take a new and different path, unlike the sprawl suburbs of Waukesha County and our neighbors to the south. We need to learn from our past history and the best of what’s new to come up with better ways to feed us, to move us about, shelter us and in a resource-limited world, to economize, localize and produce. We need to impress on the powers that be that they need to begin paying attention and return to the basics that sustain us, and help them by acting as a clearinghouse for new and better ways. In future postings, we will look at green building, local agriculture, sustainable landscaping, sustainable development, transit-oriented development, ways to build transportation alternatives to the car, supporting local manufacturing, production, and professional expertise, and retrofitting our built spaces. We will look at things that can be done at an individual level, as well as changes to county-level policy that support long-term sustainability of our resource base.

Big projects such as Sho-Deen’s proposed Jackson Creek mega-development in Delavan Lake’s headwaters have opened our eyes to what could be if outside forces steer us, and baby steps such as cooperative meetings of local officials, and regulations such as non-phosphorus fertilizers in Delavan Lake region indicate that the time is right for a new paradigm for the county. People are hungry for alternatives, as evidenced by the last election, when the “bums” in Delavan Township that supported the unsustainable sprawl Jackson Creek development were removed from office. We invite you to join us and help brainstorm solutions, and to lend your support.