Journal Sentinel announced, that if the grant is approved, trains could be running as soon as late 2012 or early 2013, cutting the travel time between Wisconsin's two largest cities to 1 hour, 7 minutes, officials say. That's about 20 minutes faster than the same trip by automobile.

Service would start with six daily round trips, connecting Milwaukee's downtown Amtrak-Greyhound station with a new station at Madison's Dane County Regional Airport, with additional stops in Brookfield, Oconomowoc and Watertown.

At the same time, service on Amtrak's Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line would increase from the current seven daily round trips to 10, with all of the Madison-to-Milwaukee trains continuing to Chicago. If Chicago wins its bid for the 2016 Olympics, the trains would provide a link between the main Olympic sites and the cycling venues in Madison.

According to Journal Sentinel, the Milwaukee-to-Madison route is part of the Wisconsin-led Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, a nine-state effort to connect cities throughout America's heartland with fast, frequent passenger trains. But the plans drawn up in the mid to late 1990s were moving slowly until the stimulus package appropriated $8 billion for high-speed rail nationwide.

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