Last night after the Caledonia Planning Commission meeting I was greeted by two citizens that wanted to express their opinion about KRM in hope of changing my mind.

They asked why I did not support the KRM and without even listening to my reasoning they began to express what a boon this will be to Caledonia.

I pointed out that the boon that has occurred in the area surrounding Regency and Mayfair has been fantastic and there is no train service there. I also reminded them of what a dump downtown Kenosha had been for years. “These areas did not prosper due to the train; they succeeded because of strong leadership that encouraged development.”

The response I got was “you need to be a strong leader and support KRM for Caledonia.”

WHAT?!?!

One gentleman decided to point out that the “METRA only costs $5 on the weekend!”

I reminded him that "it costs a lot more than that when you factor in all you are paying in local, state, and federal taxes for it.”

His response was “you are about to get in your car and go out on that slab of concrete…how much does that cost?” and then he briskly walked away.

What he didn’t want to hear is my response that when over 85% of people use “that slab of concrete” then it is worth the expense.

KRM, using better numbers than what they are predicting, will only have approximately 2,700 riders a day. This is through an area that has a population of 854,000 (as of the last census) that means only .3% of the population of the communities that the train goes through will use this train.

Is that worth the hundreds of millions of dollars to build it and then the millions of dollars to subsidize it every year?