Board Backs Plan to Target Bus Riders Who Don’t Pay

MCTS Bus. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors have formally asked for a plan to address fare evasion in the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS).

In June, MCTS announced a $10.9 million operating budget deficit for 2025 and 20,000 hours of service reductions slated for the fall. It came as a shock to policymakers who learned of the deficit, and the cuts after MCTS announced them in the press.

In the weeks that followed, as supervisors sought more information, MCTS revealed that it estimates one in four bus passengers does not pay a fare when they board the bus, costing the system $4 million annually. Upon learning this, Sup. Shawn Rolland drafted a resolution asking MCTS to develop a plan for addressing this. The board unanimously passed the resolution Thursday.

After Mass Transit funding from the State of Wisconsin, passenger revenue is the largest source of funding for the transit system. In 2023, MCTS collected just over $22 million in passenger revenue, often referred to by transit professionals as farebox revenue.

“The idea here is that we get a plan back from MCTS to mitigate the amount of fare evasion that we are seeing on the bus,” Rolland told his colleagues Thursday. “That’s all we’re asking for, it doesn’t ask for anything specific other than a plan that we can review and debate and consider before we go into the budget, where there might be budget ramifications.”

The resolution also recommends MCTS eliminate the pre-board fare payment system at Connect 1 stops. The Connect 1 bus platforms, built out as part of the system’s first, and so far only, bus rapid transit system include a kiosk that allow passengers to validate fares before their bus arrives. The validators also do not work well in the rain.

Rolland’s resolution adds that any solution should not “create a safety issue for operators or other passengers.” Fare disputes are the most common cause of conflict between bus operators and passengers in Milwaukee and across the county, according to local and national data. For that reason, current MCTS policy tells operators not to enforce fare collection.

Rolland told the county board’s Committee on Transportation and Transit that he has heard from the public that they don’t want a fare evasion policy to be “punitive to people who just don’t have the means.”

“There are unhoused neighbors who just they don’t have the funding to make this work,” Rolland said, adding that MCTS could potentially work with the county’s Department of Health and Human Services on the plan.

The system did create a new county-employed security force in 2024. The new security came after years of advocacy by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 (ATU). The union has pushed for security, and for MCTS to address fare evasion. Union officials have said a lax fare policy costs the system money and contributes to a culture of disrespect for bus operators.

“Operators are sick of it,” ATU 998 Vice President Michael Brown previously told Urban Milwaukee. “Now they’re talking about deficit, well, collect some fares. You got new security, right?”

The union has always been skeptical of how MCTS monitors fare evasion. The button operators are supposed to push to record a free rider is located out of reach in many of the buses. Others don’t push the button because they feel MCTS won’t address the issue.

“It got to be such a joke I didn’t even push the button anymore,” said Tom Stawicki, a recently retired bus operator and legislative director for ATU 998.

Rolland wants MCTS to come up with a plan to address this “culture of fare evasion,” he said during the transit committee meeting. Some routes are worse than others, he said, adding that his own experience supports this conclusion. On the Connect 1, where riders can pay before they get on, Rolland said he sees many riders not paying fares.

“And I think if we do a little work and have a little bit of investment to correct this, we can realize a lot of revenue as a result,” Rolland said.