thebruce44

Puts the Twins payroll up and almost at $100M this year. Simply amazing. Sounds about right considering they have a new stadium and are the 16th largest Market in the country.

What do you guys think they would be ranked if they had won those close ones against @WVa (63-62), Vill (74-72), @Vill (78-76), @Cuse (76-71). Say they somehow take WVa, and Vill twice (8 more points in the 3 games) and I wonder if they are ranked in the top 15. Anyway, its fun to think about and I think they have showed they can play with anyone. They are going to be that 10 or 11 seed that nobody wants in the first or second round come tourny time.

Can you imagine how more efficient our public systems would be if this money was used to upgrade government computer technology? Most agencies are still on a paper environment (not green..LOL) and are very slow because of this. HMMMM Not to take this off topic, but most of the government agencies I have worked with our behind on technology because of the people that work there. Often times they get up grades or have them available but refuse to learn them or utilize them correctly. If you want to throw money at that problem its a pretty big waist in my opinion unless you want to let a bunch of people retire and bring in a younger work force.

Someone quoted the cost of just adding another lane to the freeway to be a massive amount. If this rail line can cut down on vehicle travel enough so that an extra lane isn't needed, or expensive maintenance is reduced, and the overall amount spent on transportation is less, then it is a good deal and saves the taxpayers money. That is what needs to be determined. The maintenance issue is addressed in the report. By 2030 I think they will be able to get by with only 2 lanes, but who is to say it wont eventually need to go to 3. Long story short, its pretty safe to say this will save the taxpayers money by the end of the 2030 time period. In addition, it will have a pronounced effect on things that are more difficult to measure the direct relationship to, such as helping local businesses, less money spent on accidents and insurance, and the money value of people being able to work on the train if they choose.

And if Gas isn't getting any cheaper neither is Diesel!!! The cost of fuel per person on a train is much better than traveling by car. The difference will be much more pronounced as fuel prices increase. Therefor, as fule prices rise, the train will save more and more money at an increasing rate. But I just don't believe a high % of people travel for work regularly in state. My company of about 400, maybe 5 travel, and only 1 regularaly, but it's not to Madison, it's out of state. The traveling situation of your company is all but irrelevant to this argument. That being said, where does your company travel to typically? The Twin Cities? St. Louis? Chicago? Detroit? Hmm...maybe this could be a nice alternative. I havn't come on this board to offend anybody or put anybody down. I don't know many of you and asking Bruce a few simple questions was more about why he is so supportive of this idea. And this sentence continues to show how you have missed the whole point of my posts. You asked me how it is going to be marketed with all your specifics in mind. I answered that I don't know because thats not my job and because its pretty irrelevant. Instead of looking at the report you continue to think how this will affect you and your co-workers. Hardly a scientific study of south eastern Wisconsin's population. In addition, I am an engineer who has been asking people to keep an open mind and read the report with the understanding that I would be happy to answer questions on cost, engineering, and the planning. The specifics you keep trying to get me to address are unimportant in the grand scheme of things and not something I care about personally. Sorry I haven't been able to "convince you" but that shouldn't be the reason you are in this thread. You should be coming here like others to talk about the plan that the state has provided to the public. I for 1 am not, and never will be. Exactly as I predicted and part of the reason why I did not indulge your questions. Its pretty easy to pick you out as someone who just doesn't like this idea and will not listen to reason or try to understand the report with an open mind. If you want to convince others that this is a bad idea, showing that you are completely uneducated about it and that you are not open to further learning is only going to make people tune you out. Bottom line, I was trying to point out is that if it is running at a deficit, we the state tax payers will pay to support it. No, this actually will save the tax payers money. The deficit the train will run at is less than the savings in maintenance along 94. After posting a few days ago, I too starting asking friends co workers etc who would use this system and what they thought, the consesus and not even close (99 to 1) said they would never use it nor would they support it...I did get a couple of great ideas from the people I talked too. Most were in favor of a light rail system from downtown to the suburbs. We would all agree that an awful lot of people travel from the waukesha area to downtown. It sounds as thought he people you polled hadn't read the report either then since this accomplishes what the light rail system was supposed to do. There are 3 stops in the suburbs. Please read the report and ask questions here before you decide you don't want this...if you have already made up your mind without educating yourself, I think you will have a hard time finding people who are going to take you seriously. Bucky, its perfectly alright for people to be against this. Its your right as a taxpayer and Wisconsinite. However, I don't see the point in being so against something when you don't understand it at all. edit:formatting

I have also seen him botch a decent number of routine plays due to a lack of concentration. When someone has the tools to be a good defender and manages to do it for an entire season...then stops...you are going to get acquisitions of laziness.

They got beat up in the beginning of their conference schedule, but I think they will make the tourney if they win all the games they should from here on out. To guarantee a spot, I think they need to beat Pitt. South Florida is playing really well right now and that game worries me a bit. Besides those two games, everything else looks like it should be winnable at this point.

The 6 block walk down 4th street is really nice though. I think thats what he was refering to. I have walked around that area a lot when I was in school at Marquette. No reason not to feel safe there.

No different than when he claimed the report was wrong for estimating a $15 mil deficit and said it would instead be in the "billions." Olliegjw, I am glad you are reading the report, but it seems like you are just looking through it trying to find faults and errors instead of trying to understand it. If you find something that doesn't make sense to you then please pose the question here. However please realize that if something doesn't make sense to you, you don't have to announce that the report is wrong or post your incorrect calculations here as fact. I know you are very against this train, but posting insanely wrong information doesn't help anyone.

They beat Maryland on a neutral court...which is where their NCAA Tourney games will be held. The worst of the 3 though. Although I think they could probably handle MU at the Bradley Center. Just saying, beating Duke and MU at home and Maryland at a neutral site doesn't tell me much about how they will do in the tourny. Maryland is supposed to be an 11 seed right now, MU is on the bubble.

Actually, it's also because they also beat Duke, Maryland, and Marquette. I will be pulling hard for my Badgers, but they won't be playing the NCAA Tourny games in the Kohl Center. First of all, Bo Ryan is a great coach who always gets more out of his talent than he really should. Very, very true. How well that translates to the tourny this year though I don't know. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one or two Big 10 Teams made it to the Elite 8 this year. A Final 4 appearance would settle down some of the detractors as well.

The Badgers have the 7th hardest Strength of Schedule this season. 143rd toughest Non-Conference Strength of Schedule.Alone, that is still useless to help us predict how they would fair in another conference. For what its worth, looking it up myself, Wisconsin's current SOS is actually 10th, behind 4 Big East Schools. Their projected SOS is 42nd and that is behind 15 Big East Teams...all of them besides Notre Dame.

In the big picture, who cares which conference is better, or the best? Only one team can win the title. I would not be totally surprised to see any of the top 4 Big 10 schools in the Final Four. The top 4 can compete with anyone in the country. I thought it was an interesting debate and I care. If you don't then you can ignore the posts about it or take the thread in a different direction.

How does that account for the teams they are playing? I agree they are useful stats, but it doesn't really tell you anything about how they would fair in another league.

Aren't we talking about which Conference is better this year and not which is the best over the last 10 years?

Thanks for the kind words. As I said before, I am not trying to convince anyone one way or another. At this point I will just say that the information is all there for people to look at. If anyone has any questions they would like me to address that deal with the cost, planning, or engineering side I will do my best to answer them. If you want to ask me about how this effects your individual family and friends or how it is going to be marketed I can only help with the big picture items.

According to the pomeroy rankings, The Big Ten actually ranks 4th in the country. 1. ACC 2. Big 12 3. Big East 4. Big 10 5. SEC 6. PAC-10 Personally, I don't put too much stock in those rankings. When I look at a conference I pick the one that is more top heavy than deep. The Big East continues to be the best Conference in the Nation i my mind. That being said, I think the top 4 in the Big 10 can certainly play with the top 4 in the Big East. Cuse and Villinova would have a lot of trouble winning at the Kohl Center. I do think those two teams are quite a bit better than anything the Big 10 has to offer though.

I don't know where the Big East debate came from either I didn't just start the debate at random. I should have quoted the original post, but I was responding to this statement which I strongly disagree with:

I agree with most of the points you are making about the Big 10, but I can't agree that they are tied for the 3rd best conference in the country with the Big East. The Big East is #1 in my mind, with the Big 12 a close second. ESPN has The Big East and Big 12 both getting 7 teams into the tourny. ACC with 6, Atantic 10 with 5, SEC with 5, and the Big 10 with only 4. If you want to compare the Big East and Big 10...well at this time next week I think you are going to see 4 Big East teams (Villanova, Cuse, WVa, Gtown) ranked ahead of MSU or Purdue as the #1 Big 10 team. Then the second tears. 7 teams into the tourney for the Big East will likely be Villanova, Cuse, WVa, Gtown, Pitt, and two of Cinci/Lville/Marquette/UConn. I think those 4 could easily dominate the 4-8 of the Big 10 (IL, Minn, N'Western, Mich). Its really not even very close in my mind. edit: Well maybe not Gtown ahead of MSU unless they loose at IL or against Purdue.

They way they would most likely do it is to schedule the trains according to peak hours or events. That means during the morning rush hour you have 2 trains. Then maybe one or two mid-day. Then 2 more during the night rush hour. Then a late one. The idea is to take pressure off the interstate and that would be the most efficient way IMO.

There are very few facts in the report: we know a train will run from Milwaukee to some place in the Madison area, with some stops along the way. They will purchase 2 trains, and update the current train line to accomodate the "high speed" train. The number of routes, passengers, fares, stops, times, and total costs are all estimates. It is questionable if many of those estimates are even close to being realistic. The history of governmental infrastructure projects, and cost overruns are well-known. Later this week, I will search to see if I can find estimates on the Hiawatha line when it was put up. Also, the Twin Cities system that was installed a few years ago. How are they suposed to give anything beyond estimates for something that hasn't been built yet. "Some stops along the way?" How about 3 stops. For the other things you listed, do you want them to lock into how many routes and fare prices right now? If you don't trust those estimates thats your prerogative, but I doubt you have a better information source or a better way to arrive at these figures. If you are just that against estimates and planning or anything done by the government with tax money, then lets just let the entire infrastructure system degrade and not do anything to it. Your housing projects would require planning and estimates too, would you trust those? In terms of the cost overruns, 200 mill is actually budgeted for inflation and incidentals. Again just throwing out an idea if "job creation" is the main idea. Where did you get the idea that that was the main idea. I said before it was one of many fringe benefits. Everything doesn't need to be a new idea, there can be replacement ideas. Does upgrading existing tracks for high speed travel not count?

You have shown repeatedly that you have not read my posts. I am sorry I was unable to convince you, but I am not going to spoon feed you a 200 page report so that you have the necessary facts to make an informed opinion. edit: My goal here was never to convince anyone that this was a good idea, instead my goal was to get people to keep an open mind and make an informed decision instead of listening to some of the wild conjecture and exaggeration that is being thrown around. In that respect, I feel as thought I have massively failed. I also wanted to provide my opinion on the planning, construction, maintenance, and cost side of this project since those are topics the average person is not very familiar with. If people want to think they are experts, that I am bias, and that they know more than the people who put this togeather they can go ahead and do that. I am just glad they are not the ones who make the decisions.

$800 million for 55 full-time jobs?? Can't they find another way that would add more jobs, in this high unemployment state. That $800 million could pay a salary of $40,000 this year to 20,000 people (not taking into account payroll taxes). Plus, that $40,000 per person would result in more income taxes paid to both the state and federal governments. And those 20,000 people would have money to spend, which would result in more sales tax collected by the state. Doesn't that seem to make more sense than a train that loses $15+ million/yr, and creates a whopping 55 full-time jobs? It is something that the state feels needs to be done as part of the 2030 regional transportation plan. Working on it now while unemployment is high makes sense as it will front load a large number of jobs in the next 5 years or so during the construction. Once completed, staffing will obviously not be nearly as high. It will use a lot of computerized systems to keep operating costs low. The jobs that will be created for construction are just a fringe benefit of this. The real benefit will be $$ savings to the DOT after it is completed and a positive economic impact on SE WI. As I said before, the report outlines how it will actually save the state and general public a lot of money even though Amtrak's passenger service line will need to be subsidized by $15 mil. Robert mentioned it and I have as well...people really should read the report if they are so concerned with this issue. My brief outline was just meant to answer some of the questions that have already been posed.

Come on man, I already answered all 3. I even addressed the jobs issue. It will be 55 jobs when running. Durring construction it will be significantly more. Please, please, please read my posts.