Interesting, so now this news item makes more sense. Before it was that the City of Milwaukee was buying former Wisconsin Gas Company property as a potential station stop next to Komatsu Mining HQ being built in case the former proposal to run Commutter trains ever gets off the ground between Kenosha North to Milwaukee. However now it is revealed the purchase has another potential purpose and that is to maintain the site where the former rail connection took place between the former Milwaukee Road and ex-C&NW lakefront line for future rail commutter service over the ex-C&NW line.........which I think is smart move since it is a small parcel of land where the tracks are very close together.
The property in question runs just North of Greenfield Avenue where both railroad lines cross Greenfield Avenue in South Milwaukee. The purchase would maintain the ex-C&NW lakefront line access to the Milwaukee Intermodal Station. Here are excerpts from the updated article in the Milwaukee Business News.....
"Wisconsin Gas also owns less than an acre north of Greenfield Avenue between a set of railroad tracks. Milwaukee has negotiated an agreement to buy that land from Wisconsin Gas for a potential commuter rail stop, according to an email from Milwaukee development commissioner Rocky Marcoux.
That stop could serve the conceptual KRM commuter rail service that would link Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee. The proposed rail line has been stalled since 2011 for lack of funding. Plans at that time envisioned 30 trains per day running between Milwaukee and Kenosha.
The KRM line remains in the region’s long-range transportation plan as a project to pursue in the future, but there hasn’t been any movement toward reviving the concept. Beyond Komatsu, that stretch of Greenfield Avenue has the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences and the Freshwater Plaza apartment and retail development.
The Wisconsin Gas property fronts on two different sets of railroad track. The KRM would use one, and Amtrak’s current Hiawatha passenger service between Milwaukee and Chicago uses the other. The property could conceptually serve as a switching point between those two transit lines, Marcoux noted."
This is a really smart move to protect this former connection in my opinion just like it was to protect the former tracks leading due North from the long ago torn down Northwestern Lakefront station in Milwaukee as a future rail line to Milwaukee's North Side and potentially Green Bay. So now it looks like they are protecting the south approach of the ex-CNW Lakefront Passenger Line.
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