Milwaukee Transit to Get a Desperately Needed Boost

Funding for the express new routes comes from a $17 million federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant that provides operating support through 2017. A prior CMAQ grant funded the Blue, Green and Red lines that began service in 2012. The new Route 61 will be funded in part by the financial settlement of the suit by the Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope and Black Health Coalition of Wisocnsin against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation which argued that it discriminated against minorities for spending so much money on the Zoo Interchange project and doing little for transportation of urban minority residents who depend on bus transit.

The new express routes will achieve speed gains primarily by stopping once every quarter mile where there is no underlying service (such as the western end of GoldLine Wisconsin – UWM Express route where Route 10 service will be eliminated), and once every half mile where there is underlying service (such as the PuprleLine with the existing Route 27). Today’s bus service generally stops once every two blocks or eighth of a mile.

The grant comes the federal CMAQ grant program, which has funded a number of things in the Milwaukee area from streetscaping on Wisconsin Ave to new bus purchases. The most recent grant will fund service on the new routes for three years, but was needed as a way to avoid potential service cuts caused by a ten percent reduction in state operating support.

This is a continuing issue for Milwaukee County. MCTS has been using a CMAQ grant to fund new express service since 2012 to avoid service cuts, but that grant expires at the end of this year. The state aid cuts came in the first budget passed by Governor Scott Walker in 2011 and weren’t restored in the latest budget, despite a budget surplus. In 2013, state aid made up 43 percent of the transit system’s operating budget.