New On-Demand Paratransit Service is Working

A rider boards a paratransit van on N. 10th Street. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

A new transportation service quietly launched last month, and early indications are that it’s a success.

The new service is called the Transit-Plus Same Day Pilot, providing on-demand rides for persons with disabilities.

It is a pilot program launched by the county’s paratransit program, Transit Plus, which provides rides for persons with disabilities that have to be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance. The service launched in late August and, by most accounts, is performing well.

“Overall feedback was positive with some areas of improvement identified,” Fran Musci, Transit Plus Director, reported to task members in early September.  “We have been working with Via to address each issue as it has arisen.”

The county previously had a same-day paratransit service, but it was shut down in 2023 after falling out of compliance with Federal Transit Administration (FTA) rules. A local taxi company provided the service for the county and the vehicles were not wheelchair accessible. Without the accessible vehicles, the program fell out of compliance. The new same-day service does offer wheelchair-accessible minivans and is operated by Via, a New York-based transportation firm, but managed by Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS).

The program was developed by the Paratransit Taxi Task Force, which includes persons with disabilities and paratransit riders along with transportation officials from MCTS and the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation. The task force was created in 2023 to develop a replacement for the old taxi service, which disappeared in September of that year. The Milwaukee County board included approximately $1.3 million in the 2024 budget to launch whatever solution the task force came up with.

Kevin Meyers, a task force member who is visually impaired, was among the first riders to use the new same-day service. He said the vans were clean and comfortable and his rides showed up less than 30 minutes after they called. “I’d just like to commend Via for their service at this point in time,” Meyers told the task force Thursday.

The next challenge is spreading the word about the new service. The task force spent a significant portion of their meeting Thursday brainstorming ways to market the program and what organizations to work with to ensure riders eligible for the program are registered.

More than 5,000 paratransit riders in the county are eligible for the new same-day service. Just under 400 have enrolled in the program as of Sept. 18. And even fewer have utilized the service so far. Transportation officials soft-launched the program in August, slowly bringing riders into the system. The goal was to get a handle on how much it would cost to operate and protect the nascent service from being overwhelmed by calls for service.

The total program cost for the soft launch in August was approximately $98,000, which included van retrofits, branding, new GPS programming and 111 hours of transit service. The program will need additional funding to continue beyond the pilot phase. The $1.2 million budgeted last year should carry the program well into 2025.

The 2025 Milwaukee County budget process begins in October. It is expected funding will be tight. Policymakers have a projected $11.5 million budget gap to overcome, and the county administration is attempting to advance one of the largest projects in the history of the county: a new criminal courthouse.

“We need to show or demonstrate that it’s being utilized, and what is being utilized is being done successfully,” MCDOT Director Donna Brown-Martin told the task force.