Milwaukee residents can now go directly from the rails to the air.

One week ago a new Amtrak station at General Mitchell International Airport opened. Trains will stop there on every trip on the Hiawatha route, which runs from Milwaukee to Union Station in Chicago. There are seven round trip trains Monday through Saturday and six on Sundays on the existing Hiawatha line.

"We hope (Mitchell) will end up serving as Chicago's third airport," said Frank Huntington, chief of rail projects and the property bureau of rails and harbors for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

The station, which cost $6.8 million, was helped by the efforts of Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who raised $6.5 million in federal funds for the station. A spokesman for Kohl said it took the senator over two budgets to secure the necessary funds.

"The new passenger rail station will provide an essential link between rail and air traffic for both passengers and freight," according to a press release from Kohl's office.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the project has been in the works for 15 years. It took a long time to get the funding together and acquire the land, he said.

"I think it's a great way for people to get to a destination in Milwaukee that's south of downtown," Magliari said. "Likewise, people from Illinois have the option of Mitchell Field, which is much more inexpensive by rail than O'Hare and Midway are by cab."

The new station is located at South 6th Street on the Airport Spur Freeway in General Mitchell's Remote Parking Lot B. The airport will have free shuttles going from the station to the airport's main terminal.

"In terms of what we expect, we're hoping it will have a fairly significant impact on rail use," Huntington said.

Magliari said a survey by WisDOT two years ago showed that 47 percent of the passengers surveyed said they would use an airport station.

The number of passengers on the Hiawatha route has been increasing, with a total of 470,186 riders last year, according to an Amtrak press release.

Huntington said Midwest Airlines and Amtrak are working on creating joint tickets, which would promote using the rail system to reach the airport and help both Chicago and Milwaukee passengers.

The fare to Milwaukee from the airport is $6, and the fare from Chicago to the airport is $20, the same as it is to Milwaukee. It takes 11 minutes to travel the distance between the airport and the city, according to the Hiawatha route schedule.

"We're hoping that it will help everybody involved, the airports, the airlines and also the general public to get them that transportation service," Huntington said.

The new station was news to some individuals who were waiting for trains or to pick people up at the downtown Amtrak station Sunday.

"It's a good idea, because now a lot of people can go to Milwaukee and take the train directly to Chicago," said Deepak Jain, 27, of Milwaukee.

Nancy Doro, 54, from Green Bay, was waiting with her daughter in the station for her daughter's train back to DePaul University in Chicago.

"I think it's a good idea but I don't think we'll ever use it because we never fly out of Milwaukee," Doro said.

The Hiawatha line joined two other Amtrak routes that serve airports in the United States, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport in California and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 25 2005.