MCTS Ridership Grows in 2023, Still Far Behind Pre-Pandemic Numbers

MCTS Connect 1 at Wisconsin Avenue Stop. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is on track for a 9% year-over-year ridership increase.

The transit system expects to provide approximately 17 million rides by the end of 2023. Unfortunately, this number is still a far cry from the ridership MCTS had prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, MCTS recorded approximately 28.9 million rides.

Still, riders have steadily returned in recent years after ridership plunged to its lowest level, 14.3 million, in 2021. The numbers for 2023 represent a 19% increase over ridership that year.

“MCTS plays an important role in connectivity across Milwaukee County, whether it’s connecting people to jobs, education, healthcare, or recreation,” said MCTS Managing Director Denise Wandke in a statement to Urban Milwaukee about the latest figures. “We’re looking ahead to the future to see how BRT can support transit-oriented development such as affordable housing and mixed-use properties along those corridors.”

Riders, and the fares they pay, play an important role in the funding of the transit system. Declining ridership can trigger a feedback loop that causes cuts to service, which in turn leads to less ridership. Sustaining year over year gains in ridership is critical to the future sustainability of the transit system. The system once covered approximately 30% of its operational costs, but that number has dropped alongside ridership.

The transit system’s structural deficit, contributed to in part by declining ridership, was expected to lead to a massive budget shortfall in 2025 when federal COVID-19 stimulus funding ran out — were it not for the passage of the new 0.4% county sales tax. The 2024 county budget used new revenue to backfill the MCTS budget, allowing it to stretch out its federal stimulus funding for two extra years.

The sales tax pulled the transit system back from the brink. Before its passage, the transit system was forecasting transit cuts equivalent to approximately 50% of the system.

In a bid to remake the system and attract more ridership, MCTS overhauled its routes in 2021, rebalancing them to put a premium on high bus frequency to improve reliability of the system. But the project was undertaken without additional funding, so in order to rebalance the system to 60% high frequency routes, it had to pull buses from other routes.

High frequency, shorter travel times; that’s also the idea behind the new bus rapid transit route called the Connect 1, which runs east and west between downtown Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, primarily along Wisconsin Avenue. The service relies on new transit technology, elevated bus platforms, dedicated bus lanes, fewer stops and eventually off-board fare validators to create the rapid transit experience.

The Connect 1 launched in June, and, by November, its daily ridership had increased 25%. According to MCTS, its average daily ridership has held steady since, making it the seventh most popular route in the system.

The top performing route based on average daily riders is Route 30, which runs a horseshoe route between McGovern Park and UW-Milwaukee. Route 30 buses run north and south on N. Sherman Boulevard, east and west on Wisconsin Avenue, then zig and zag across various East Side streets between Downtown and UW-Milwaukee.