Well, Mayor Koos must have missed the news about Madison’s bad luck with the election of Walker. Walker’s rejection of what could have been the linchpin behind some exciting plans for our downtown, complementing nearby Monona Terrace and the redo of the Capitol East parking garage, and undoubtedly sparking new interest in another convention center hotel, has been Normal’s blessing.

That’s because much of the federal money that was to have come to Wisconsin for its mass transit infrastructure went to Illinois instead.

Thanks to the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Illinois received more than $1 billion to upgrade the Union Pacific-owned tracks between Chicago and St. Louis to handle trains traveling up to 110 miles an hour. Normal got to use $21 million of that for its new station.

Wisconsin, of course, was to get $810 million to upgrade the railroad tracks from the Illinois state line north to Milwaukee and west to Madison as the beginning of a high-speed corridor that would eventually have ended in Minneapolis. Talk about Madison sitting pretty, smack dab in the middle of what promised to be a robust transportation corridor, not to mention that initially as many as six trains would visit the city each day.