Two $810 Million Projects: Marquette Interchange and High-speed Rail: Which Creates More Jobs?

Pop quiz. Here’s a tale of two $810 million projects:

All things being equal , which project would be responsible for creating more jobs? High speed rail or the Marquette Interchange? (Don’t forget the Marquette was the state’s largest construction project at the time. Ever.)

If you answered high-speed rail, you’d be correct. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Held, the Marquette Interchange project employed just 500 people at its peak:

The work force reached 500 trade workers and laborers at its peak, and to date, more than 2.25 million work hours have been devoted to completing the 28 ramps and 21 miles of roadway.

That’s not to say they weren’t valuable jobs. Anyone who has been through Milwaukee knows how important the interchange is. But anyone who knows about travel and business likewise knows how valuable linking Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago (and eventually the Twin Cities) with rail would be.

Back to the main point: The job numbers and the comparison. How many jobs will the high-speed rail project create? Around 4,700, though the number might be as high as 5,500 according to the AP’s Scott Bauer.

There is another huge difference between the two projects. The Marquette project nearly broke the state’s transportation fund. Building the high-speed rail project, on the other hand, wouldn’t cost the state anything, since it’s paid for by the Recovery Act.

Scott Walker says he wants to kill the high-speed rail project and spend the money on roads and bridges instead. He’s been called out for his fantasy by Republicans and Democrats alike, who say it’s not going to happen.

But just for a minute, let’s play Walker’s game. Ask him for a list of transportation projects he wants to fund. If the Marquette example is any indication, killing high-speed rail and spending it on roads is only going to create a fraction of the jobs that high-speed rail would. And just what are the odds that money for road building would be “redirected” to Walker campaign donors?

So if you need more proof this rail project is more about ideology and hostility to public transit, this is it. As mentioned recently, if Walker kills the project it will take the state 133 years to break even so while Walker might claim the rail project is a budget issue, the numbers don’t back him up.

So to summarize, building the high-speed rail project doesn’t cost the state transportation fund a penny. But it creates 10 times as many jobs as the Marquette, another $810 million road project. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Especially if you made job creation one of the central premises of your campaign….