paul253

but it's not like roads, highways, and interstates aren't heavily subsidized with tax dollars. Obsessed beat me to the bunch but the key difference is that people use roads and interstates MUCH more than train. Its not even comparable. Let's face it, this is being forced down our throats by certain people who want it. There have been no studies done as to how many people would use it or how many cars it would take off the roads. And why would there be? It would hurt their position. There are misleading people by calling it high speed. People act like since this is federal money it doesn't really count, like federal money just grows on trees. I think by comparing this to things like sewer dumping and Asian carp, he was just basically saying....look......having a train would be great, but we need to get our priorities straight. We have much bigger issued to solve first. Everyone touts this as being so environmentally positive, but nobody seems to care MMSD dumps billions of gallons of untreated sewage directly into one of our greatest assets. This is just not the time for something that is going to immediately add to the woes of the taxpayers.

Bingo. You guys are looking at the small part of a much larger project. The idea is to connect Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Minn, Milwaukee, Joliet, Waukegan, and Madison by rail probably in that order. People wanting a line up to Appleton and GB are probably setting their sights too high for now. And yes, it will be government subsidized I am sure just like Amtrak is right now Bruce...I really respect your opinion as an engineer. But I think this paragraph here underscores two major problems. One, if they can't even get the Milwaukee to Madison route done correctly, can we really expect them to get the rest of it right? As I said, a Dane County Airport Stop is not a Milwaukee to Madison line. It's a stop near Madison on the way to Minneapolis. Second, if the government already subsidizes Amtrak, why build a competing rail? Are they going to subsidize both of them? That's absurd. Third, have there even been any studies done to see how people are going to ride this thing? Just from this board, and including myself, I see a lot of......"well I'll ride it but only if...." I haven't seen any studies published as to how many people are expected to ride this thing. Yet they are just dead set on doing it. Sure, we can drive our cars all we want now, but this infrastructure needs to be in place when we run out of oil or the price skyrockets. Oil is already pricy and we are a decade behind on alternative fuel research. I sure hope we don't wait until there is a desperate need for high speed rail in this country before we start finally building it. Funding for step 1 of 10 is now ramping up. A couple things about this. By the time we run out of oil we'll probably have had to rebuild this line 5 times. And if running out of oil is really a concern, we have plenty of new areas where we can drill for more. As far as the infrastructure goes, what's going to end up happening is we are going to have to choose....rail or interstates. The interstates are going to rot away as this money pit sucks up all the funds needed to fix the roads. New taxes are going to be created to fund this darn thing and you'll end up paying a heck of a lot of money for whether you ride it or not. ridership began to increase even before it was announced they were widening this stretch of road Ridership has increased lately and it still pales in comparison to how many people use the roads. We need to stop comparing ourselves to Europe. Just because it works there doesn't mean it will work there. If you want people to start using trains and change mindsetz, then do it right. Make it small (Milwaukee to Madison only). Make it fast (twice as fast as it would take to get there by car). Make it convenient. Once you show people you can make it work, then you can expand it. Hell then people will want you to expand. Instead we are building this massive massive brand new rail line before we really know if anyone is going to use it. We're even building a train in frigging Milwaukee. Seriously, it takes 10 minutes to drive from UWM to downtown but we need to build a stinking train instead. This should not be a political issue. It should be a "if we need it we will build it" issue. Right now I question if we need it. And I really question the "if you build it they will come" mentality when we have no money to build it.

If I can take a train at 110 mph from Milwaukee to Madison, you'd better believe I'd choose it ahead of a car. And getting people out of cars is a *good* thing. This statement I think sums up the issues I have with it. For one, just looking at a map I would say that if it stops at the Dane County Airport its not a Milwaukee to Madison line. That'd be like a train stopping in Brookfield is a "Milwaukee stop". To me, if I have to get off the train and onto a bus just to get into the city, and then get onto another bus in the city to get where I need to go, it's not convenient and I am not going to take it. As I stated before, this isn't Chicago. You aren't going to be stuck on the freeway for two hours trying to get home. If they don't do it right, people won't use it. Also, trains now-a-days can go a heck of a lot faster than 110 mph.....so why are we settling on this? I have said before if we are going to spend preposterous amounts of money on this, we may as well do it right. Build separate tracks and get trains that can go 150-200 mph. Can you imagine getting to Minneapolis from Milwaukee in an hour and a half? That'd be something worth taking.

Nate kind of took what I was going to say. There is a right way to do this and a wrong way. First off let say that Milwaukee is NOT Chicago. Traffic in Milwaukee is not that bad....and yes, I have driven on the freeway during rush hour. The need for trains to Madison, in my opinion, is minimal, especially at such a ridiculously high cost. That being said, they way its being planned now is absolutely the wrong way. Having a stop a the Dane County airport is a joke and everyone knows it. The only reason they are doing it is because it makes it easier to extend the line to Minneapolis which was the goal from the beginning. The line needs to go right into downtown Madison. I'm not familiar with Madison, but if the main part of the campus is not downtown, there needs to be a line that goes to campus as well. Milwaukee wise, there absolutely needs to be a stop at the State Fair. It leads right into shuttles that can take you to Miller Park or Summerfest. There is also plenty of room to build it and makes it a lot easier for someone to come pick you up as its literally right next to the freeway. There also needs to be stop somewhere in between like, Johnson's Creek or something. I imagine a lot of people would like to take the train to go to that big outlet mall. If you can walk/take a city bus/get a ride to a train station in Madison and get to Milwaukee and to where you need to be all in an hour or so, you would actually make it possible to live in one city and work in the other, which would be huge. But to make this end in the middle of nowhere at the Dane County Airport.......why???? I'm not entirely opposed to rail, but my lord......for once can we just sit back and do things the common sense way instead of screwing it up from the beginning?

I don't really see what the appeal of basketball at Miller Park would really be. The Bradley Center is a perfectly suitable venue. Tell that to the Bucks : ). The only reason I want to see basketball is because it would either be a marquee non-conference game (Michigan St, Wisconsin, maybe a team like North Carolina or Kentucky), a game that would easily sell the BC out. Or I still think third and fourth round NCAA tournament games would be a good fit. I don't know if you'd necessarily sell it out, but I'm sure you could draw more than the 18,600 the BC can fit. Plus it would be a nice way to promote the stadium and if successful would lead to more NCAA tournaments. They seem to stick to the same venues quite a bit (Indy, Minneapolis, Greensboro, etc.)

Oh and a yearly event I've called for in the past that I'll call for again......an annual Brewers Prospect All-Star game. It can be played whenever, really, but most likely would have to be either before the season or after the season. Mid season....I don't think you could make it work. If you do it after the season you could include the prospects drafted in the June draft of that year too. I'd go to that every year if I could.

Would you be willing to trade those two minis for a Suppan?

If would have to be the Badgers. They were willing to play in Green Bay a few years ago so I'm sure they wouldn't mind playing in Milwaukee. They have a nice following in Milwaukee. Granted it was the NCAA championship game, but when they played here a few years ago tickets were super hard to come by. The Blackhawks might be willing to play an exhibition game here, but I don't think that would draw enough interest.

Just to put things in perspective here. $9000 total from the bars. 81 homes games. If you're hiring extra police for traffic concerns you figure you'd need them there for at minimum 5 hours. Assuming I did the math correctly, that would leave about $22.22 an hour for the police. That's not even enough to cover the hourly expense of one police officer working overtime. Personally I don't buy the Brewer's explanation and I'm interested to see how often and how much they raise the fees.

Have you ever been to an elite 8 or sweet 16? Not many people there at all, because they make you buy tickets for the whole session. I actually did. I went to the games at the Metrodome in Minneapolis the year Marquette went to the Final Four. I just bought tickets when I got there from a scalper. It actually worked out real well because in the Sweet Sixteen Marquette played in the first game and Wisconsin played in the second. I absolutely cannot recall how many people were there but it was quite a bit. I wouldn't be as worried about attendance as you though. I know a lot of people go out and buy tickets right away so they can resell them because they know people may not want to risk buying tickets to the whole session. If I'm, say, a UCLA fan I might not risk buying tickets to the entire session, but I'll still go and buy tickets from someone who is selling single game tickets. And if UCLA wins then I'll do the same for the next game. Its the same way it works for the Frozen Four. I remember I really lucked out the year Wisconsin won the title in Milwaukee. I bought tickets for it before the tournament started so ended up with tickets to the National Championshio game. As far as the field issue goes. It's a legitimate concern. But you'd have a few years warning that there'd be the tournament there. The Brewers could simply request that their first two or three series are on the road and then they won't have to play a home game until mid April, which would be plenty of time to fix up the field. Oh, and to get around that rule about MU not being able to play there. To get around that you'd simply have to have UWM "host" it, not MU. And I wonder what round the rule ends. Obviously if the final four is in Milwaukee and is hosted by MU, its not like MU wouldn't be allowed to play in it should they make it that far. I wonder if it applied to the 3rd and 4th rounds. Finally, hockey. That's something I thought about to. The only thing with that is that its been happening so much lately that I'm not sure you'd sell at that many tickets. Its not all the special now. I thought I heard they are kind of having a hard time selling tickets to this years game....and that is in Madison. I still like the idea of a wrestling pay-per-view personally : )

If not the Final Four then why not the Sweet Sixteen/Elite 8. I remember they've had that in Milwaukee once before, but why not have it at MP instead of the BC. You'd think you could probably fit over 50,000 people for basketball. Apparently 2009 was the first year the NCAA set a minimum seating capacity of 70,000 so yeah a Final Four won't happen. (Odd that even though they required a 70,000 capacity the average attendance for the three games was under 50,000, which could probably fit into Miller Park). Either way, I'd love to see a college basketball game at Miller Park. If they can do it in November, they can do it in March. [/i]

they should get one of those BMX events like they do in Jack Murphy Stadium and Chase Field with the dirt bikes riding around and doing jumps and stuff as they race. That'd be rad! I was thinking about something like that, but they do those kind of things at the Bradley Center already. I just wonder if there'd be enough interest to move it to Miller Park. I really think basketball could work. If the Miller Park heating system could bring it up thirty degrees, surely you could find a way to knock it up another 5-10 degrees. Whether it be additonal heaters brought in or covering the panels with something to prevent drafts.....I don't know...something.. You figure you'd have to have an outside temperature of at least 30-35 degrees, which you probably could do either way early in the season...say November or later on in the season, like March (not likely March though). The Final Four isn't until April and even though this is Wisconsin weather, I think you can reasonably expect 30-35 degrees in early April (remember wind wouldn't be an issue either). Is there a certain temperature the NCAA requires for it's facilities? I was also thinking about a bowl game or a Wisconsin Badger non-conference game, but again, not sure its big enough.

With 4 team divisions I would venture a guess that you would have a .500 or even under .500 team making the playoffs almost every year. I'm sure you would every now and then but I wouldn't particularly care. You could expand the playoffs to 6 and have maybe a best of 3 first round, followed by best of 5 and best of 7. You'd probably have to shorten the season to 154 to make up for this as well. Or you could just keep it at 4 teams. I've always believed if you can't win your own division then you really complain too much if you don't make the playoffs.

The real obvious solution would be expansion by 2 teams and shifting to an NFL 4 4-team divisions in each league. I am not in any way advocating this as a solution but just for fun I looked at some of the largest cities without teams as a way to see who may get a team if they wanted one. Some of the choices: San Antonio San Jose Portland Las Vegas Austin Columbus Ohio Charlotte Jacksonville Indianapolis Nashville Austin and Columbus are college towns and probably wouldn't support a team. San Jose is big but you wonder if it would cut too much into San Francisco and Oakland's fan base. Jacksonville, while the biggest of all the Florida cities, might have the same issue as other Florida cities. The advantage to Jacksonville, though, is that unlike Miami and Tampa, Jacksonville only has one other pro sports team to compete with whereas Miami has football, basketball, and hockey and Tampa has football and hockey. Las Vegas....obvious issues there but would MLB be the first to tap that market? Indianapolis....maybe. Nashville....doubtful. Charlotte would be good but my selfish opinion thinks we already have too many teams in the south/southeast and need more teams out west. To me, if any two cities should get a team, they should be Portland and San Antonio. San Antonio is a huge market and have nice little rivalries with either the Rangers or with the Astros and Diamond Backs. Portland, which tried to get the Expos, only has one other major sports team and would form a very natural rivalry with Seattle.

Having spent close to $400 million dollars to build a stadium with a roof on it, I was wondering the other day if Milwaukee is really getting enough bang for it's buck with Miller Park. Don't get me wrong, I fully supported building it and was more than happy to pay a .1% sales tax to fund it. That being said, I would love to see Milwaukee more aggressively pursue non-baseball related events to draw additional fans. It seems like only non Brewers events there are college and high school baseball games and once a year a minor league game. What I would absolutely LOVE to see has actually been talked about but nobody seems all that excited about pursuing it, and thats a college basketball game. Marquette vs a team like Wisconsin, Michigan St, or Illinois could draw a decent amount of people. If successful it would also show the NCAA that Milwaukee is capable of hosting the final four, which would be a huge boost to the local economy. I would also like to see a concert or two every summer at Miller Park. Also, and this one may be a bit of a reach, but why not try to get a major WWF pay-per-view event there (Summer Slam???) I would think the WWE, which comes to Milwaukee fairly often, would jump at the possibility of selling 50,000 tickets to an event. If they do one if the summer there is the option of an open aired event or they could close the roof. Or what about a high school football game? I don't know if it's big enough to go for college football, but i'm sure some of these high school teams would love to play there. I don't know, maybe I'm not thinking straight, but I'd love to see more at Miller Park, especially in the off season. Does anyone have any other ideas for what they'd like to see at Miller Park?

You need the uneven leagues unless you add 2 teams or play interleague all year. I have heard this before but I can't remember the reasoning because when I think about it it doesn't make sense that you couldn't do everything the way you need to. I'm sure in a world in which we send rockets to the outer rim of the solar system we can figure out a way to make scheduling work with 15 teams in each league. As far as I'm concerned interleague play can take a back seat in order to have equal divisions. As much as I enjoy watching the Marlins and Royals play each other every few years, I can do without it. I agree with Invader. How can you justify having the divisions set up the way they are now?

The Tampa Bay Rays need to move and MLB needs to fix its divisions. I'm sorry but to me its absolutely absurd that one division has 6 teams and one has 4.....and likewise one league has 2 more teams that the other. There are some cities, in my opinion, that would support baseball a heck of a lot better than Tampa would. Charlotte and Portland, OR come to mind. Probably San Antonio as well. If you need to have a team switch leagues again, then do it. Offer incentives if you have to, but get it done.

Mat Gamel should be playing right field in Nashville. I really think he should play first base, but until Fielder is traded or leaves via free agency there is no point in that. I think he eventually ends up at first base or gets traded. Even if McGehee struggles, don't forget about Taylor Green. Hopefully he bounces back nicely from his wrist injury as I think he would eventually fill the #2 spot in the lineup very nicely.

I have always found it weird in college hockey that a team like Wisconsin can be #1 in the national polls and only be tied for 4th place in their conference. Obviously scheduling has a lot to do with it, but still. Anyway, HUGE series next week, but it seems like every weekend lately has been huge. Who'd have thought Minnesota-Duluth would be the team to beat at this point in the season?

What this means is that he needs to put the best OBP lineup on the field on a consistent basis. SBs have no correlation with consistent run-scoring. Not going to argue with you there. I was just implying that with a seemingly less "powerful" team this season with Gomez and Escobar replacing Cameron and Hardy, they are going to need to find a different way to score. And while stealing more bases won't necessarily equate to more runs, it certainly won't hurt. Not to mention we have a lot of guys (Weeks, Hart, Escobar, Gomez) that are capable of doing it, so why not try?

I'd rather take a chance on Pedro than give anything to get Maine. I still don't see why anyone would be willing to trade a prospect or a starter like Hart to get Maine. That being said, I can't imagine the Brewers are going to get another starter.

it'll be interesting to see if Macha does start using some of the young legs on the bases to put some pressure on the opposing pitching and defenses. He'd better. I wouldn't surprised at all to see only two players hit over 20 home runs this season so Macha had better figure out a way to score consistently.

I thought I'd dig up this thread again now that Doug Davis has signed. Melvin did exactly what I thought he needed to, which was upgrade the rotation some more. Davis isn't exactly a Cy Young candidate, but I think he's capable of putting up an ERA under 4. That's a full run + over what Suppan did last year, assuming Davis is able to do it, which is huge. RobDeer put it well when he said it'll be interesting to see who steps up. Other than Fielder and Braun, there are a lot of questions offensively. If Weeks, Gomez and Escobar can get on base and use there speed the cause opposing pitchers problems it'll be huge. And if Manny Parra can throw strikes like he's capable of, the rotation just might be good enough to compete. Either way, I applaud Melvin for making another move with the rotation.

Damon says he wants $13 million for 1/yr or he may retire Damon has spent too much time with the Yankees if he thinks he is worth $13 million a year. See ya later buddy, have a good retirement.

Good luck. I thought it made perfect sense last year but nobody wanted him