Despite Low Offer, MCTS Loses Bid To Run Waukesha Bus System

MCTS bus. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Despite having the lowest cost bid, the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) will not be awarded a contract to manage the City of Waukesha‘s transit system.

Earlier this year, MCTS bid to manage Waukesha Metro, which operates 10 fixed-bus routes with an operating budget of approximately $7 million and has annual ridership of approximately 500,000.

The formal bid was submitted by Milwaukee Transport Services Inc., the quasi-governmental nonprofit that controls MCTS. If successful, MCTS would have managed the system, while Waukesha maintained responsibility for funding it. Only one other entity bid on the contract: the current manager Transdev.

Waukesha’s Transit Commission voted unanimously Thursday evening to approve a new five-year contract with Transdev. The contract will next go the Waukesha Common Council for final approval.

Transdev is a French multi-national transportation corporation. The firm does business in 19 countries including the U.S., where it has contracts in 46 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. The City of Milwaukee contracts with Transdev to operate The Hop streetcar system.

MCTS submitted a slightly lower bid than Transdev, coming in approximately $60,000 lower than Transdev over the life of the five-year contract. However, it was not enough to outweigh Transdev’s 23 years of experience managing Waukesha Metro.

“Mainly, they scored significantly higher than MTS on the technical side, because of their vast experience with providing the service to us,” said Brian Engelking, transit manager for the City of Waukesha. “They also manage over 40 locations in other parts of the country, or similar size contracts.”

On top of Transdev’s experience with the Waukesha Metro contract, Engelking said there was concern that this would be a “new venture” for MCTS.

“I mean, are they capable? Probably.” Engelking said. “But there’s just more risk in in going with a vendor that has not done this before, when you have an established vendor that has done this for a number of years, and they’ve been successful in doing that.”

Transdev also sweetened their proposal, offering to give Waukesha access to its purchasing network and the lower prices that come with the international corporation’s economy of scale.

MCTS was interested in Waukesha Metro for the opportunity to take a step toward regionalizing transit in the Milwaukee area. “Ultimately, the hope is to illustrate how a regional approach to public transportation is a key component in growing the region economically,” wrote MCTS Deputy Director Julie Esch in a June county board report.

MCTS and Waukesha Metro already cooperate on transit. The agencies worked together to connect the new Connect 1 and Waukesha Metro 1 to replace the former MCTS GoldLine service that ran into Waukesha. Both agencies also use the same fare collection system, WisGo.

Transit officials have indicated they are trying to grow MCTS out of its current budgetary problem. The system, which does not have a dedicated source of funding, has a structural budget gap. Officials recently halted development of a new bus rapid transit line to keep the system solvent until 2028.

“I feel that we should look at different ways that we can incorporate some of these other mobility type of things in order to qualify for an RTA or to find additional funding,” MCTS Managing Director Denise Wandke told a Milwaukee County Board committee in June. “Just being a fixed route service doesn’t necessarily make us as attractive as, maybe, taking in paratransit — instead of having it as an outsourced, another contract.”

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