Limited Funding Pushes Up Fares for New Paratransit Taxis

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

In roughly five weeks, on-demand paratransit taxis could return to Milwaukee County nearly a year after they disappeared, but fares won’t be cheap.

County transportation officials are negotiating a final contract with VIA, a New York-based transit firm, to provide an on-demand transportation service — similar to a taxi — for people with disabilities. It will be a pilot program, testing demand and the new service. Fares for a one-way trip will likely be $12. A shared van ride with the traditional TransitPlus service costs $4.

On-demand service is exactly what it sounds like, whereas the traditional paratransit program requires riders to schedule rides a day in advance and faces ongoing concerns about reliability.

The new service will likely launch in September. Users will be limited to eight trips a month, as it will be marketed as a paratransit option for emergencies.

The county canceled on-demand taxi service for persons with disabilities in 2023 after finding that the program was out of compliance with federal regulations. The taxi service contractor, American United Taxicab Services, did not use wheelchair accessible vehicles or randomly drug test the drivers. Rides under the prior taxi service cost an average of $4.96, according to a county report.

The county didn’t have enough money to stand up its own taxi service. Instead, Milwaukee County supervisors added $1.2 million to the 2024 budget to fund any potential alternatives developed by a Paratransit Taxi Task Force created to work on a replacement for the former service.

Officials are working on how best to roll out the new service. They expect 1000 riders will use the new service, which is more than the former one, according to Fran Musci, director of paratransit services for the Milwaukee County Transit System. With wheelchair accessible vehicles, the rides will be accessible to more paratransit users.

With approximately 5,000 paratransit-eligible riders using the county’s TransitPlus service, officials are considering rolling the new taxi program out in phases, opening it up to a few hundred riders at a time on a first-come, first-served basis, Musci told the Paratransit Task Force Thursday.

“The initial thought was to start with a group of people and kind of monitor the use for the first couple of weeks, and then add another group of people and … break the implementation up into phases,” Musci said.

Some members of the task force did express concern about a phased rollout and providing enough time to notify eligible riders.

MCTS and the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) must notify thousands of eligible riders that a new service is coming back online. The plan is to use “multiple avenues of communication” with physical mailers and emails sent to both individuals and organizations like IndependenceFirst and Disability Rights Wisconsin.

With limited funding to run the pilot program, and no dedicated source of future funding, members of the task force shared concerns about the sustainability of the program.

“I will tell you that it is not an option for us to start with $4 [fares],” MCDOT Director Donna Brown-Martin said. “This is an on demand premium service, it’s not an option.”

The contract with VIA, though not finalized, will cost the county $90 an hour per driver. The county will cover the difference between the fare revenue and the $90 an hour cost.

A starting point, Brown-Martin said, was to look at fares that covered one-fifth of the $90 an hour cost, or $18.

Most task force members who spoke supported fares in the $10 to $12 range. There were concerns about the “economic justice,” as task force member Don Natzke put it, of charging people with disabilities — many who live on a limited income — $18 for a one-way trip.

The task force ended up largely in agreement that $12 was a good place to start and that if fare prices needed to be adjusted in response to demand, or for sustainability, that could be done.

“As this is a pilot, a lot of things could change, and probably even the fare,” Musci said.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect that riders will be eligible for eight rides (four round-trips a month), and that some members of the task force expressed concern about a phased rollout of the program.