The Milwaukee County Board’s Transportation, Public Works, and Transit Committee, chaired by Supervisor Michael Mayo, held a meeting on Wednesday morning to discuss the recommendations approved by the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority. Julia Taylor, the Governor’s Appointee on the RTA, was on hand to answer questions along with Carl Mueller, the RTA’s PR consultant, and Ken Yunker, who has worked closely with the RTA in his role at SEWRPC.

A regional transit authority with a dedicated funding source is the solution to the Milwaukee regional transit woes. The use of an authority represents the most efficient and reliable way to deliver a service to a region. A dedicated and reliable funding source is essential to empowering an authority to deliver the services for which it is tasked. While Milwaukee’s freeway system was designed and built to serve the region, the Milwaukee region’s multiple transit systems stop and start at invisible lines. The various transit systems have different fares, operating hours, vehicles, and branding. As they are now, the systems simply aren’t designed to work together to ensure a high quality of service to the region.