Trump’s deal with Foxconn was supposed to bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin. What happened? —...

The Talgo deal was in fact seperate from the HSR deal from Ray LaHood (who was in charge of Obama HSR and is a Republican). Governor Doyle wanted to build Talgo trainsets for the entire Midwest and beyond. The HSR contract was just for Wisconsin and only involved 4-5 trainsets max. The Doyle administration to feed their stupid dream of building Talgo trainsets for everyone accepted a no-bid deal from Talgo to supply the Ray LaHood HSR deal. Three other existing railcar builders or rehabbers protested the no-bid arrangement. Walker rejected the HSR deal for more than one reason. The biggest being the small print that the HSR money would not be grant but rather a loan if Wisconsin could not meet the project implementation dates. Walker thought that was too much risk because in addition to the Fed loan of $800 million, Wisconsin would have to pay out an additional $800 million to achieve the projected speed of just 110 mph plus rehab and build depot facilities. 110 mph sounds fast but then when you through in all the station stops (some of them promised poltically by Gov Doyle).......average speed dropped to something like 75-80 mph and people started to say WTF are we paying all this money for? Classic case why polticians screw up what otherwise would have been a good idea executed by private means. At any rate, the decision by Doyle to go Talgo was because the trainsets were cheap, and they were cheap for a reason as you saw with the recent derailment in Washington State with a Talgo that broke apart and flew it's passengers all over the countryside along with most of the train contents. American made passenger cars would have maintained their integrity in such a crash with far less fatailities. Regardless of the argument of if the trainsets were really safe.........the Midwest HSR Compact (largely other Democratic Governors at the time) gave the Doyle administration the finger and made it clear they would never go with Talgo and preferred a bi-level design that was endorsed by Amtrak.........Similar to Amtrak's California Surfliner cars operating in Southern California. So opens the question as to why exactly Doyle went with the Talgo contract to start with, why was it no bid with no competition, and why was so much taxpayer money involved in the incentives. So actually, if you do the research on the story. You'll see there is far more involved than the superficial story written by a Democratic Party publication in Madison.

MSgt Steve Sweeney - Ahh and here we go. Do all my research for me so I don't have to only read one or two articles. How about you jump on Google and see for yourself when you find a claim I made above that is untrue let me know and then I will find a source to prove you incorrect........it's far faster that way then to have me spend the whole rest of today posting links and then have you cherry pick what links you believe and which you do not. I've played this game before with highly partisan posters and know how it turns out. So NO, the effort is not all going to be mine. As for your article about the Wisconsin State Journal being biased....it was never part of the discussion here and that is going off on a tangent. If they state other than what I have stated their facts are wrong. I grew up in Wisconsin fighting for expanded rail passenger service since the age of 10. I know my facts. I've followed Ray LaHood back when he was just an administrator for NJ Transit. I know his past frustrations and I read the terms he wrote for the HSR money each state was to receive. You can write him personally if you do not believe me. Terms of the grant money were to become a loan if the project was not up and running within a specific timefrfame. Attached is a TIME article which is mostly correct but specific facts are incorrect. TIME is wrong in asserting that Chicago to St. Loius or Chicago to Detroit is up and running as 110 mph corridors now, we are still waiting for speed increases from 80 to 90 mph, which allegedly will happen on Chicago to St. Louis this year but has not happened yet. Additionally, TIME neglects to get into specific details that I provided above that it was government red tape at the federal level that slowed these projects to a crawl. In one case the Obama administration addressed one issue but the law did not change until this year. The issue was the United States could never buy off the shelf European Equipment, like long ago with European autos the European Railcars had to be retrofitted to comply with U.S. Safety requirements (many of which were outdated). Obama changed that law after his experience with his HSR program but it did not go into effect until this year. However, now we can buy anything you see running in Europe without it being retrofitted to U.S. Safety specs. The reason Chicago to St. Louis does not currently have a trainset is they went to the Japanese to build a bi-level car design to match somewhat the Amtrak California Surfliner and the car they came up with failed the car structure compression test of 800,000 lbs, it crumpled up far too much. The Feds looked at the requirement and others and recently changed the railcar building standards (which also would have doomed Talgo as a choice had Wisconsin gone forwards with it). So Midwest HSR has decided under the new regs and given they already built cars for use in the U.S. that passed all the tests to go with SIEMENS as a railcar builder but now they have to wait in line until 2022 for the equipment. So that means another 3 years of less than 110 mph running. This is all fact and documented on the Internet. You can go to the Midwest HSR page on the internet and read it So below is the Time article which I would rate as only 60% correct. and the link to the Midwest HSR page which will get you started. Time Magazine: http://time.com/3100248/high-speed-rail-barack-obama/

Illinois High Speed Rail: Note at bottom of link it states Infrastructure in place in 2018 to achieve 110 mph, which is correct. Fact is no trains are traveling at that speed they are still traveling at 80 mph max due to lack of trainsets and PTC implementation.
http://www.idothsr.org/about/overview.aspx

Note on this link the project started in 2009......we are in the 10th year. Tell me what other country on the face of the Earth takes 10 years to build less than 300 miles of track to 110 mph standards? That should raise a red flag in your head. The track upgrades are all handled by fully automated equipment these days and at the most this should have been a 2 to 3 year project if managed right from the start. Look at the timeline and all the red tape at the federal level that delayed them. Remember Trumps speech on deregulation and red tape slowing down infrastructure projects........here is your exhibit A.
http://www.idothsr.org/about/funding.aspx
Democrats argue that we need all this red tape. This rail corridor has been in use since before the turn of the century and carrying passengers the whole time. Tell me why we need Environmental Impact Studies to delay the project as much as they have?

You can google about the Sumitomo rail car deal and what happened there. So this again boils down to the Obama administration NOT ASKING the hard questions up front via key and experienced players before they proposed the project on a National Level. Now given all this on these projects there is still key flaws remaining. None of the HSR projects underway have secured funding sources. They are all at the whim of whomever is in the governors mansion at the time and the associated roller coaster funding process of feast and famine.........which will slow them down further. Last but not least we do have the example of a private company doing the same thing and that is with Brightline in Florida which proposed a 110 mph system connecting Miami to Orlando, it's half built already, trainsets delivered and running, stations built and except for the one in Orlando which is not open yet. The Private Company will do an IPO later this month on NASDAQ under symbol VTUS. It announced plans to expand to Tampa beyond Orlando and that it will achieve profitability by 2024. It's doing far better then the government run programs.

One more comment. U.S. Media sucks when it comes to reporting on Rail Passenger or Rail Frieght issues as the TIME MAGAZINE article points out above. Best sourcing for what happened to High Speed Rail under Obama if your interested in learning is from publications such as Railway Age.......which is a railroad trade publication not a mainstream news publication.........I trust most of what Railway Age says but they too let their wishful thinking and get carried away on some articles. For example they are far too critical of Amtrak and their idealogy is closer to Freight Railway management than Passenger. Though their reporting on High Speed rail projects has been superior to that of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

Drop the “what about Obama” crap. It was the Trump admin that bragged about this business deal trying to justify its trade war and tax cuts to businesses by insisting it’s those policies that will bring companies to the US and create lots of jobs. This story is highlighting that wasn’t at all the case. Much like the Carrier plant layoffs in Indiana and the few auto plants that shutdown or reduced production across the country to move certain production overseas. Bottomline, there was a perception this was a big deal to Wisconsinites and who could blame them for being upset that expectations weren’t met.