Streetcar Will Run On Consolidated Route During Summerfest
Consolidated Festivals Line will bring every streetcar to lakefront.
Two The Hop streetcars pass each on E. St. Paul Ave. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
The City of Milwaukee is poised to make it easier to take The Hop streetcar system to Summerfest.
From Sunday, June 15 through Saturday, July 5, the city will merge the system’s two lines into one loop.
The change makes it possible for a rider to hop on the first vehicle they see and be assured it will eventually pass the lakefront stop at the base of The Couture.
“Summerfest is one of Milwaukee’s busiest times, and that extends to The Hop,” said Department of Public Works Commissioner Jerrel Kruschke in a statement announcing the impending change. “We saw fantastic ridership during last year’s festival – the first with our Lakefront extension in operation – and received very positive feedback on the combined ‘Festivals Line’ we utilized. We’re proud to bring this service back for our riders, making accessing the festival grounds as easy as possible for Milwaukee residents and visitors traveling from anywhere along the streetcar route.”
Last year ridership on The Hop rose by 30% during the nine days of Summerfest.
The Festivals Line makes it easier to access the lakefront and Henry Maier Festival Park, but imposes an approximately 10-minute delay on riders heading north from the Historic Third Ward to Downtown and the Lower East Side.
Service will be extended to 1 a.m.
The roughly two-mile M Line, which opened in 2018, runs from the Milwaukee Intermodal Station through the northern end of the Historic Third Ward and much of East Town before ending at E. Ogden and N. Prospect avenues at the southern tip of the Lower East Side.
The shorter L-Line runs partially on M Line tracks, between E. Kilbourn and E. St. Paul avenues, and partially on a lakefront extension along E. Michigan Street and E. Clybourn Street that opened in late 2023.
“We inconvenience the riders we have four days a week to deal with potential ridership three days a week, which has seen somewhat of an increase,” said streetcar advocate and area Alderman Robert Bauman in July 2024, in summarizing the effect of the first summer of the change. After initially pushing DPW to make the change for Summerfest, council members voted to kill it on July 30 when DPW extended the configuration throughout the summer.
Riders can track the exact location of vehicles in service using the TransLoc smartphone application.
The system, particularly the M Line, has been plagued by service reductions in recent weeks due to vehicle availability. “We are working diligently to restore service to normal. We apologize for any inconvenience,” says near-daily posts on the Hop Alerts X account.
The Hop is budgeted to cost $5.1 million to operate in 2025, which is to be partially offset by $1.7 million in sponsorships and federal operating grants. The gap is filled by funding from the city’s Transportation Fund, which receives revenue from the city’s parking meters, parking citations and parking lots and structures.
In March, the council approved a $1.5 million transfer to perform a five-year overhaul of the system and track, which included approximately $1 million for vehicle repairs related to the batteries, $200,000 for dealing with failing switches, $85,000 for labor and $180,000 for wheel refurbishments.
Festivals Line
The Hop Festivals Line route map. Image from The Hop.
Existing System Map
The Hop’s M Line (blue) and L Line (yellow). Image from The Hop.
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More about the Milwaukee Streetcar
For more project details, including the project timeline, financing, route and possible extensions, see our extensive past coverage.
- Streetcar Will Run On Consolidated Route During Summerfest - Jeramey Jannene - Jun 11th, 2025
- City Hall: Milwaukee Must Replace Failing Streetcar Switches - Jeramey Jannene - Feb 24th, 2025
- Streetcar Confronts Limited Funding, Operations Challenges - Evan Casey - Jan 22nd, 2025
- Council Kills Streetcar’s ‘Festivals Line’ - Jeramey Jannene - Jul 31st, 2024
- Streetcar Will Use Festivals-Oriented Route Through Summer - Jeramey Jannene - Jul 9th, 2024
- The Hop’s Lines Will Merge For Easier Summerfest Service - Jeramey Jannene - May 30th, 2024
- Streetcar Begins Daily Service To The Couture, BRT Will Soon Follow - Jeramey Jannene - Apr 11th, 2024
- Milwaukee’s Three Streetcar Extensions Need Mayoral Direction - Jeramey Jannene - Nov 8th, 2023
- Transportation: Streetcar Extension Opens Sunday - Jeramey Jannene - Oct 28th, 2023
- Ride Along On Streetcar Extension Before It Opens - Jeramey Jannene - Oct 11th, 2023
Read more about Milwaukee Streetcar here
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The tram needs to be expanded significantly, given signal priority and travel faster on the tracks. Too often when our city governments implement changes to transit infrastructure, they’re done incrementally because that’s what they can get passed – and the Hop is JUST like painted bicycle lanes – it’s an incremental, cheap change that makes public a very poor result. People don’t like bike lanes because their first experience with them is these painted bicycle gutters that don’t protect people on bikes from cars hitting them, and drivers don’t like bike lanes because the vast majority of their experience is
Notice anyone complaining about the remade Walnut anymore? Of course not, because that project was done correctly right away. But because we keep building transit infrastructure incrementally, it’s building opposition from people who would not be opposed to stuff built the right way.
So let’s focus on what does not need a bunch of tax money to make the Hop better. Most if not all of the streetlights along the route have been updated to allow for signal priority. Now is the time to put that to use. The Hop should never need to sit at a stoplight – the ONLY time I believe it should is if the Connect1 bus down Wisconsin is approaching the intersection at the same time. Part of the reason people on the lower east side may choose to uber, drive, bike or use some other mode of transportation to get to the Third Ward or the Intermodal station is because it’s not faster for the Hop.
The Hop can also be ran quicker than the ~10 mph it’s currently running. I notice it can get up to 20-25, but the vast majority of the time it’s moving at a crawl.
If you implement these two changes – speed and signal priority – you make the Hop far more effective in the space it’s in right now. Keep working to expand for other routes, but do what you can to make the existing tram as useful as possible.