New BRT Project Gone For a Decade

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

The Milwaukee County Transit System says the canceled north-south bus rapid transit project is being put on a shelf for later, but later means a long, long time from now.

It will likely be more than a decade before MCTS has funding to pursue the project again, David Locher, MCTS manager of enhanced transit told the City of Milwaukee’s Public Works Committee Wednesday.

The north-south project would have been called the Connect 2 and intersected with Connect 1, the nine-mile BRT line running between downtown Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa.

Connect 2 was to be a $148 million, 18-mile bus BRT line running along the 27th Street Corridor. But in late August, MCTS announced it was pausing development of the project. Doing so would allow the system to shift money from the project to its operating budget, staving off service cuts until 2028. A major factor driving the decision, according to MCTS, was new estimates that it would cost approximately $6 million annually to operate the second BRT line.

Declining state transit aids have left MCTS with a structural deficit. The system managed to avoid service cuts for the past few years thanks to the infusion of federal funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. After approving a new 0.4% sales tax, county policymakers used new funding freed up by the tax to make investments across county services, including $17.8 million for transit. This funding bought the transit system an additional two years of solvency. Pausing the north-south bus rapid transit project buys the system another year.

But why stop now? That’s what Ald. Robert Bauman wanted to know when MCTS briefed city council members on their decision to cease work on the project. Bauman said he thought MCTS should continue planning the project until it was shovel ready, then put it on the shelf. Specifically, Bauman wondered why officials wouldn’t pursue approval of the project’s environmental review from the federal government.

“I’m trying to avoid calling this an unwise decision, without getting all the facts, but on its face, it looks like an unwise decision,” Bauman said.

Transit officials disagree. The project is at approximately 30% for planning and design, Donna Brown-Martin, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation said. That level of preliminary engineering allows future planners to return to the project in the future, she said.

Plus, officials expect a decade or more to pass before the project comes off the shelf.

“So many things are going to change between 10 and 15 years that we would have to make so many addendums to that original NEPA document that we might as well dust off what we have and put it back together mostly through scratch,” Locher said.

Many project details may change by then, including what kind of buses are running down the road. For instance, electric buses of some kind may be back on the table by then. MCTS officials told county supervisors earlier this year the system no longer had a manufacturer from which to purchase battery electric buses for the Connect 2.

Bauman noted that the Connect 1, and the plans for the Connect 2, were announced with much fanfare, and that bus rapid transit was supposed to be the “new paradigm” for transit in Milwaukee.

“And now we’re abandoning that,” Bauman said. “I think that has to be clearly stated for the record.”

MCTS will need action at the state level to secure enough revenue to stabilize the system and pursue a project like the Connect 2 again.

Brown-Martin said the county is working to secure additional funding from the state. The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature has resisted providing additional funding for transit. During the pandemic, the Legislature cut transit aid to Milwaukee County after MCTS received federal stimulus funding.

The time to secure dedicated funding for the transit system was during negotiations for the additional 0.4% sales tax, Bauman said.

“The probability of that work being successful at this point, given the political lay of the land, is zero,” Bauman said. “The public should know that.”