Riders Decry County’s Paratransit Service

Transdev Bus Driving Through Downtown. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Longtime users of the county’s transportation program for people with disabilities say the service has hit bottom.

On Saturday, riders of the county’s paratransit service, TransitPlus, held a public forum with officials from TransDev, the private company providing the county’s paratransit service. Approximately a dozen riders spoke, describing a transit service plagued by logistical and scheduling errors, and contributing to rising tensions among riders and between staff. The complaints were echoed in a survey taken by individuals and organizations that work with and employ paratransit riders.

TransitPlus has always long been criticized for its reliability. Part of the problem is that late pickups are, essentially, baked into the paratransit system. But for nearly the past year, issues with the county’s paratransit system have reached new levels, according to riders. And it all began when a new company, TransDev, assumed control for the entire system.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” Stephanie Miller said Saturday. “I’ve been riding this program in every form since 2006, and I’ve never seen service so inept as I have with TransDev.”

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) used to contract with two companies for the service: National Express and First Transit. In 2022, the county awarded First Transit a contract for the entire service. Then TransDev bought First Transit. The company took over the TransitPlus contract in late 2023.

The transition from two providers to one in August 2023 was a mess. TransDev was understaffed and incapable of meeting the demand. Rides were frequently arriving late and people were being left stranded waiting for pickup. While these criticisms remain, riders are also now describing a system with a tenuous grip on the scheduling and routing needed to provide an efficient, on-time transportation option for people with disabilities.

Dennis Dent works for Industries for the Blind and Visually Impaired (IBVI), a manufacturer and government contractor employing blind and visually impaired persons in West Allis. There are about seven people who live near Dent that all work at IBVI, he said, and lately TransDev has been sending four or five vans to pick them up and bring them to the same location.

These logistical failures are impacting the quality of the service for riders. Like Sandy Tisdale, who recently had a ride arrive an hour and a half late. Ed Robinson, who also works at IBVI, said it has taken him approximately two hours to get home to Brown Deer after work. Mueller, who lives on the western edge of Wauwatosa, said she has been taken out to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport and north to Shorewood on her trips home.

Debbie Bartlett has two adult sons with cognitive disabilities. They attend the Wil-O-Way day program at Grant Park, which is roughly a 10 minute drive from their house, she said. Lately, her sons have had to sit on the bus for more than a hour to get home from the park 10 minutes away.

The poor scheduling and service is taking a toll on passengers, riders and dispatchers alike. Tensions between riders can rise on the vans when they are crisscrossing the county together and jockeying for who should be dropped off next. Other riders said they have been treated disrespectfully by drivers and dispatchers. One rider, Danita Jackson, said she heard a driver call into dispatch and protest that they had to pick up riders who were “rather large” and using wheelchairs.

“Can you imagine hearing that as a rider?” Jackson said.

Since the failures during the transition period, MCTS officials have reported mixed performance results for TransDev. In March, MCTS reported that TransDev was improving and was arriving on-time for 93% of rides. However, all rides have a 30-minute pickup window and are not considered late until they are 31 minutes late.

Adrian Kleinz, executive director of the Center for Deaf and Blind Persons, has had enough of the transit system’s statistics. He has watched as clients sit in the center’s lobby for an hour or longer waiting for their ride, he said, or dropped off two hours late for a meal service, or notified that a van was arriving to pick them up 20 minutes after being dropped off.

“The system is broken,” he said. “And I don’t want to hear again the 93% success rate because all I see throughout the week is clients being forced to sit around and not being treated with respect.”

The Center for Deaf and Blind Persons is the only institution in the state of Wisconsin providing services for individuals experiencing dual sensory loss, he said. “If we go away, there is no one left for them.”

In recent months, TransDev service failures have cost the centers thousands of dollars, he said, explaining that the center cannot bill for services when clients are dropped off late or picked up too early.

IBVI has also felt the impact of TransDev’s poor service, according to Kevin Fortune, a paratransit user and IBVI employee. “It’s gone all the way to our board of directors, our CEO has called me in the office [asking about the problem],” he said.

TransDev Responds

After hearing the complaints at the public forum Saturday, TransDev and MCTS officials offered a response to the paratransit riders attending the meeting.

Even when on-time pickups have improved there have still been riders dealing with late rides and missed appointments and “that affects your lives deeply,” said Paul Buharin, the Midwest regional vice president.

“I heard some very, very interesting comments about the buses running all over town,” he said. “And I want to talk with my team, not just folks here in Milwaukee, but also the folks at corporate about if there’s a different approach for routing.”

Patrick O’Brien, assistant general manager for TransDev in Milwaukee, said his biggest takeaway from the meeting Saturday was the extended periods of time riders are spending on board the vans.

“While we’ve been focusing on making sure we’re trying to get enough drivers to be out there on the road and have enough routes to be able to cover the geographic area, we’ve gotten away from looking at those long on- board times,” O’Brien said.

MCTS officials have been sharing the riders complaints and concerns with TransDev, said Fran Musci, MCTS paratransit director. “What you’re saying here is not anything that we have not been advocating for the same amount of time,” she told riders.

Update: A previous version of this story misspelled Stephanie Miller’s last name.