30 New MCTS Buses Included In 2024 Budget

A Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus from Gillig. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is planning to have funding for 30 new buses in 2024.

The transit system has not been replacing buses as fast as it retired them in recent years. Since 2018, the fleet size has dropped from 400 to 321 at the start of 2023.

MCTS has had a structural deficit for years, as the cost to provide service outpaces the funding it receives. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, federal stimulus funding has papered over this structural funding imbalance. But bus purchases have taken a hit as a result.

The system has been using federal funds intended for one-time purchases, like bus replacements, to fund its operations. The federal government has not provided regular mass transit operating assistance since the 1990s, but the county has used capital funding as a workaround to plug federal funds into operating expenses.

Transit officials advocated for funding to replace at least 30 buses next year, and County Executive David Crowley included the request in the 2024 recommended budget. This would build on the 101 bus purchases budgeted for in the past three years.

In 2021, MCTS estimated that it would need to replace more than 200 buses by 2024. Donna Brown-Martin, director of Milwaukee County Department of Transportation, said in August that the transit system still needed to replace approximately 90 aging buses in the coming years. The average lifespan of a bus is approximately 12 years or 500,000 miles.

Part of the challenge for the transit system is that the county purchased a huge number of buses more than a decade ago using funding from a different federal stimulus bill, the 2009 American Relief and Recovery Act that was passed in the wake of the global financial crisis. And now that cohort of buses is reaching the end of its life.

Crowley’s budget includes approximately $21 million for 30 new buses. Only $4.1 million would be county funds, and the rest would be supplied through a federal grant.

In order to keep pace with its replacement schedule, the county will need to continue funding purchases of 25 to 30 buses annually, according to an analysis by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan research organization.