Welcome to the world of government funding. There are more worthy projects than there are funds to make them happen. The funding also depends on the political will of the state government involved. Wisconsin has divided government and a lot of people who think that more passenger train service is not a high priority. Thus, in order to convince the paymasters at both the state and the Federal level that a project is worth spending tax dollars, one has to go through a rather long and involved process to show that the project is practicable and is a good value proposition. That's what the paperwork is for. And even if that's so, the project is competing with other projects in other states. And this all has to be done more or less transparently, with plenty of opportunity for opponents of the project to publicly weigh in. This is not like some private-sector operation where some zillionaire or cabal of corporate overlords can meet in semi-secret and make decisions quickly.
