County Paratransit Program in Crisis

A rider boards a paratransit van on N. 10th Street. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

County paratransit is in a state of crisis, according to advocates and riders.

Paratransit provides mass transit mobility for people with disabilities. A taxi program for these transit riders is ending at the end of the month, and the van service, which is the primary paratransit offering, is floundering.

For years, the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) has run a paratransit program, Transit Plus, that has been operated with two providers: National Express Transit and First Transit. In 2022, the county awarded First Transit a new seven-year contract, beginning in November this year, to become the sole paratransit provider.

“MCTS chose to consolidate service with one vendor, First Transit, for a simpler, more straightforward path to modernizing service for riders with disabilities,” a statement from the transit system said at the time. “Instead of the complexities, costs, and delays of improving service across multiple vendors, MCTS has set high standards for a single vendor to meet.”

Transit Plus had scheduled a transition period, with “waves” of rides being shifted from National Express to FirstTransit beginning in June. But in July, FirstTransit was swallowed up by a bigger company, TransDev, a French multinational transit company. And as the transition continued, TransDev found it did not have enough drivers to provide all the rides it was expected to provide.

Paratransit riders have been left stranded, been late to work, missed and canceled critical medical appointments and forgone other daily trips to places like the pharmacy and grocery store as the service has become increasingly unreliable. Transit officials and riders have both described one incident that occurred at the end of August where a diabetic person’s health was endangered as they waited hours to be picked up after work, missing their schedule for a meal and an insulin shot.

“We failed,” said Donna Brown-Martin, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation. “We failed the clients who utilize our services.”

Brown and Fran Musci, director of paratransit services, told supervisors on the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Transportation and Transit that they have begun shifting some rides back to the provider being phased out, National Express, after a disastrous week for county paratransit at the end of August. Musci said less than a week earlier at a meeting of a paratransit task force that the biggest problem with the switch is a lack of drivers. “The biggest issue is bodies,” Musci said. “We need bodies.”

Danita Jackson, a paratransit rider and advocate with Disability Rights Wisconsin, lives in Oak Creek. Jackson is blind and there are no regular fixed-route buses that come near her home. She relies on paratransit to go to work and the doctor and just about everything else someone needs transportation for. She noticed the van service becoming increasingly unreliable and, during the recent heat wave, canceled appointments, saying, “I don’t feel like getting stuck in 90-degree weather somewhere waiting for a van to come back and get me.”

As the van service floundered, the clock continued to tick down on the county’s paratransit taxi service, which ends Sept. 28. That service provides on-demand rides for ambulatory people with disabilities. The taxis do not have to be scheduled well in advance like the van rides. New Federal Transit Administration Rules require a taxi service to be accessible for people with mobility impairments, but the current vehicles provided by American United Taxi are not compliant. The rules also required drug screening, which the taxi company does not do. These new rules effectively shut down the county’s paratransit taxi service, as there wasn’t county funding available to purchase new vehicles and pay for drug screenings. A county task force continues to search for on-demand alternatives to the disappearing taxi service.

Jackson said the taxi service provided a useful alternative to the vans for last-minute trips and appointments that couldn’t be missed. “We don’t have that option anymore,” Jackson said. “We’re literally dependent on these van services.”

Even before the shift to one provider began and service began to deteriorate, paratransit riders complained about long rides and late pickups. The switch has only exacerbated the problem, “but it seems to really have escalated since they went over to using one company,” Jackson said.

This escalation began on Aug. 14 when the second wave of rides were scheduled to transition from National Express to TransDev.

“We bit off a little more than we were able to swallow at a time and it came back and bit us,” said Mark Ward, regional director for TransDev, to supervisors Tuesday. “That was our responsibility to know what our limits were and to make sure we didn’t exceed them.”

But some close observers of county transit say these staffing and capacity issues are no surprise. Donnell Shorter, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998, said he warned at the time of the new contract that he didn’t think switching to one provider was a good idea. Shorter’s union represents the drivers for both National Express and TransDev.

Less than a week into the August transition, Shorter met with drivers from TransDev. “They explained to me then, on Aug. 19, that they were drowning,” Shorter said. The National Express drivers were not getting a lot of work, the union president said, while the TransDev drivers described excessive requests for overtime from the company, with some driving 14-hour shifts.

His union has been trying to persuade more drivers to switch from National Express to TransDev. But some drivers have been working for National Express for 20 years or more, Shorter explained, and they don’t want to drive the wider TransDev vans; a detail that can affect the day-to-day work experience of professional drivers.

Don Natzke, a former director of the Milwaukee County Office for Persons with Disabilities, worked for years connecting transit and the transportation of people with disabilities. He’s blind and now retired, but still a regular rider of county transit. He said the problems that have arisen with the switch to a single-source contract for paratransit services “should not have been unanticipated” given the realities of the current job market.

As county transportation officials scramble to fix the van program in the twilight of the taxi service, some advocates are suggesting a voucher that riders with disabilities can use for other transportation services like, taxis and ride-share. Residents with disabilities deserve more transportation choices, not fewer, Natzke said, and ones that are accessible for everyone, not only the ambulatory.

This population is no stranger to having a harder time getting around than most of their neighbors. But lately, it’s only getting harder, lending credence to a saying used among people with disabilities that Natzke said goes like this: “We don’t necessarily live longer, but it takes us longer to live.”