Transit Company Exploits Workers, Costs Taxpayers

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

Under pressure to improve service and running over budget, a county transportation contractor is pushing employees to the breaking point even as it runs over budget.

Transdev, a French multinational transportation company, holds the contract to operate the paratransit service for the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS). Called TransitPlus, it provides a transit option for persons with disabilities. In 2023, after acquiring the Ohio-based company First Transit, Transdev found itself with the sole contract for a system that was previously operated by two companies: First Transit and National Express.

MCTS went to a single contract to simplify the service and eliminate “the complexities, costs, and delays of improving service across multiple vendors,” according to a statement from MCTS in 2023. The result, however, was an immediate, steep decline in the quality of paratransit service.

Riders were left stranded and late to work. Service became so unreliable that medical appointments were canceled and daily trips to the pharmacy and grocery store were put off. In one widely-discussed incident, a person with diabetes was left stranded so long they missed their scheduled meal and insulin shot and became ill. The former head of the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), Donna Brown-Martin, offered a terse assessment of the transition: “We failed.”

Since then, service quality has ebbed and flowed, but mostly ebbed, with riders repeatedly telling transit officials the system is not improving.

In 2025, Transdev’s poor performance started to affect the transit system’s bottom line. By July, Transdev was running $3.4 million over budget, contributing to a $10.9 million budget deficit for MCTS. The overall budget gap led MCTS officials to cut bus service in the fall last year.

Under pressure to improve service, Transdev is reportedly pushing drivers until they burn out and, meanwhile, telling MCTS officials and advocates they are having trouble maintaining staffing and that drivers frequently call out of work.

For most of the past year, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 (ATU) has collected complaints from the paratransit drivers alleging Transdev frequently forces them to work long hours, holding them after the end of their shift; prevents them from taking a lunch break; and forces them to work on their day off.

At first, ATU officials decided to give MCTS and Transdev time to solve the issues, after being assured they were working on it, said ATU Vice President Michael Brown.

“We thought there was gonna be some changes there and we laid off of them,” he said

But the changes never materialized, and since March 2025, Brown has collected dozens of complaints. In December, he filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Transdev told Urban Milwaukee the company “values its partnership” with ATU and “appreciates the dedication” of employees. “We are actively and collaboratively working with union leadership to address staffing and attendance challenges, with a focus on supporting our workforce while continuing to deliver safe, reliable service for riders,” the company said in a statement.

To meet service demands, Transdev is reportedly “offering” overtime to drivers. But complaints reviewed by Urban Milwaukee included more than a dozen allegations suggesting Transdev is forcing drivers to work longer than their scheduled shift.

“Apparently they don’t care about the contract,” one driver wrote.

Another driver alleged that Transdev forced them to work for seven hours without a lunch break. When the driver complained to dispatch, they were told the company can push drivers without lunch for seven and a half hours. Such a policy would violate the contract with ATU, Brown said, which requires Transdev to offer a lunch break  no less than 2.5 hours after the start of their shift and no less than 3 hours before the end of the shift.

One complaint alleged Transdev forced a driver to work on their day off. Again, such a practice would violate a contract provision requiring two consecutive days off, according to Brown.

One complaint reviewed by Urban Milwaukee showed the driver wakes up for work at 3:30 a.m. to make it to work by 5 a.m., then he is regularly forced to work a roughly 13-hour shift. “This is exhausting. I’m not getting the sleep I need,” the driver wrote.

Transdev has has reported it is struggling to maintain drivers. In a January email obtained by Urban Milwaukee, Transdev General Manager Patrick O’Brien told MCTS officials and paratransit riders, “Transdev is having difficulties maintaining adequate staffing levels.”

Brown said the problem is that Transdev is pushing drivers to burn out, leading to a high turnover rate. “It’s overwhelming what’s going on over there,” he said.

The alleged heavy-handed labor practices are not helping service, either, and may in fact be making it worse. A new report by MCTS shows Transdev is still failing to meet contractual requirements for service: too many pickups are late, riders spend too much time on the buses, too many trips are missed, appointments are being missed and productivity is too low.

Low productivity has pushed the program over budget in 2025, according to the report. Transdev is running more service hours and providing less service than the contract budgets for, leading to cost overruns. “In addition, as Transdev has focused on improving performance on the Productivity metric, many of the customer-facing metrics such as timeliness and ride duration have decreased,” the report states.

Transdev is “in exploration of alternative scheduling software that could further assist in closing the gap between expectations and service provided,” according to the report. Kevin Meyers, a paratransit rider and advocate, said he and others have been pushing MCTS to purchase new scheduling software. The current system is outdated and a likely source of scheduling problems, he said.

Asked to comment on the new report, a spokesperson for MCTS said, “MCTS takes our duty to provide transit and paratransit service to all users seriously. Our leadership team engages regularly with Transdev to discuss performance related to all contracted metrics and we continue to evaluate solutions that will better serve our paratransit users.”

The problems with the paratransit system all go back to the decision to award a single-source contract in 2023, according to Brown.

“[Transdev] needs to take accountability on what’s going on,” Brown said. “Since they got here, things haven’t been running right.”

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