I am a local alumna who reads The Marquette Tribune's online format from time to time. Your article about the new Amtrak station was the first I heard of a renovation for the station.
I was outraged by Keeley Kerrins' comments in "Amtrak facelift." Is she unaware of what a convenience the train is to local citizens, especially to downtown citizens who are now greatly inconvenienced by the tear down of the I-94 east on-ramp to Chicago as well as all the business travelers and commuters? I have known people for years to use the train to commute from Milwaukee to Chicago for their livelihood on a daily basis as well as for ad-hoc trips to the city. If she had ever taken the early morning train, she would see how many people use the station. I also have friends in Chicago who do not have cars and must rely on Amtrak as a form of public transportation, and for those people the current station is poor at best. This rebuts her point that Amtrak is not "defunct and inefficient." It does see "activity."
While her suggestion of better allocating the money to finishing the Marquette Interchange is good in theory, the encouragement for mass transit to the city to the south is necessary for regular commuters who depend on the train. And I am pretty sure they figured out the funding before the demolition began, though I can see her point of government agencies' propensity to miscalculating budgets of such large projects.
I have used the train to travel for work from time to time as well as for leisure, and sometimes the train is late, or you get there early, and have to wait. Then there is no place to grab some food, nor are the surroundings very pleasant to spend any time in. My boss uses the train quite often for work, and actually travels all the way to the airport because the current depot is so despicable. I think maybe she should gain some perspective on the world before commenting frivolously about topics which she clearly knows very little about.
This viewpoint was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 22, 2005.