As we all know, in an alternative timeline, this would have been done a decade ago, but:

About half a year ago, Madison announced the start of a study on where to put a passenger rail station (project website). However, it looked like it has not been updated since then, which is concerning because it says the next meeting about it should be this summer. I emailed the contact email (amtrak@cityofmadison.com) for an update and got this response:

Hi [Lilia], unfortunately the meeting has been pushed back a few times and we’re now aiming for a fall meeting. Sorry about that, but if you sign up for email updates on our website, you’ll be notified when it’s scheduled. Thanks for your interest in the project.

So, hopefully the project will be spared from fizzling out yet again! Of course, selecting a station location is not building the station, not upgrading the Watertown-Madison portion of the rails, and not actually running the service, but if this actually moves forward, it’ll be a great step toward getting a shadow of what we should have gotten a decade ago.