Jul 07 2008
Momentum Building for Commuter Rail Line From Milwaukee’s Southern Neighbors
The Chicago Tribune had an interesting piece I missed last week about how the pressure for extending a commuter rail line from Kenosha to Milwaukee is building from employees and employers alike.
Time for Chicago-Milwaukee commuter line has come, employees, companies say
Chip Brewer, director of worldwide government relations for S.C. Johnson, has said the company cannot always draw top job candidates because Racine is not connected to Chicago or Milwaukee the way communities are in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Boston. He said younger employees want mobility.
“When we recruit people, we would love them to want to live and work and raise families in Racine. And many employees and executives do that,” Brewer said. “Many times you have two wage earners, and for family reasons, or employment reasons, they choose to live elsewhere.” - Chicago Tribune
An excellent example of something I’ve been saying for years now: Younger educated professionals, like myself and my wife, take mass transit into account when considering where to move and raise their families.
In order to draw those people to Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin, we need to be able to compete with cities like St. Louis, Seattle, Denver, and everywhere out East that are light years of ahead of us in terms of mass transit options.
Completing the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line would be a step in the right direction, and not just from the perspective of those in Milwaukee.
Yea I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Kenosha and has recently taking a CPA position at a firm in downtown Chicago. He basically said he couldn’t of taken the job if he didn’t have the Metra line.