FlexRide Touted For Its Success

FlexRide van at Malaika Early Learning Center, 125 W. Auer St. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

FlexRide, a non-profit workforce transportation service, is being recognized for its work connecting city residents to suburban jobs.

The Wisconsin Policy Forum, the Milwaukee-based non-partisan policy organization, has picked FlexRide as a recipient of its annual Salute to Local Government Awards. FlexRide is being awarded for its “Innovative Approach to Problem Solving.”

MobiliSe, a non-profit and transit advocacy organization, created FlexRide in partnership with UW-Milwaukee and the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC). It provides an on-demand taxi service that operates between specific pickup zones in the city of Milwaukee and drop-off zones near large suburban employers and business parks that can’t be reached by public bus routes.

“We’ve given 100,000 rides since we launched,” said Dave Steele, executive director of MobiliSe.

The program launched in 2022 and, with steadily growing ridership, expanded in 2023. The early success led the state of Wisconsin, Milwaukee County and now Waukesha County to invest in the program. FlexRide also branched off to offer rides specifically targeted at working parents. It partnered with daycares in Milwaukee to provide families with transportation to and from daycare and work.

FlexRide fares are $3 and riders can purchase weekly passes for $20 and monthly passes for $70.

The recognition from the policy forum is “validating,” Steele said, “but it’s even more validation to see that thousands of Milwaukeeans are now using FlexRide.”

MobiliSe started working on FlexRide as a solution to a problem that is not unique to Milwaukee, “the mismatch between where people are living and where the jobs are increasingly located,” Steele noted.

Inexpensive land and highway access has led new manufacturing facilities and business parks to increasingly move or locate outside of the city core, Steele said. This leaves thousands of individuals unable to access the jobs that provide a good wage or higher benefits, “that they could really benefit from.”

While UW-Milwaukee and SEWRPC helped the project off the ground in 2022, investments from state and local governments were critical to its expansion.

FlexRide has proven successful at serving a “focused and targeted” problem and population, but it is not a replacement for mass transit, Steele noted.

“We serve 500 individuals a month,” Steele said, “Milwaukee County Transit serves tens of thousands a day.”

Yet the growth of FlexRide has proven it can help close some of the workforce transportation gaps in the Milwaukee-metro region, which has been “really gratifying and validating,” Steele said.