By Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel
Madison could be a leading candidate to land a permanent maintenance base for high-speed trains, a top state transportation official says.
The capital city would be a logical spot for the maintenance center because it would be roughly in the middle of a proposed high-speed route from Chicago to Minneapolis-St. Paul, said Chris Klein, executive assistant to Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi.
A decision on where to build the maintenance base, which would create dozens of jobs, probably will be part of the final design process on the planned Milwaukee-to-Madison high-speed route, Klein said. That process also would resolve a controversy over where to put the Madison train station and would decide where to build stations between Milwaukee and Madison, he said.