Canceled BRT Project Saves MCTS Budget Until 2028

MCTS Connect 1 at Wisconsin Avenue Stop. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Scrapping plans to build a $148 million bus rapid transit project will keep the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) solvent until 2028, officials said Wednesday.

In August, the transit system announced it could no longer afford to continue developing the Connect 2, which would run perpendicular to the Connect 1 along the 27th Street corridor. The 18-mile bus route would have spanned the county and provided faster, more frequent bus service in one of the busiest transit corridors in the county.

Transit officials were pursuing a federal grant to cover approximately 80% of the project costs. But it wasn’t the other 20% of development costs that worried transit officials, it was the annual cost to operate the line.

“If we were to continue with the north south BRT, we would be adding $6 million to our operational budget,” said Denise Wandke, MCTS managing director.

MCTS has a structural deficit — with more money going out than coming in — that has been kept at bay since 2020 largely due to the infusion of federal COVID-19 stimulus funding. The system was on schedule to run out of funding in 2025. In the 2024 budget, County Executive David Crowley and the county board allocated an unprecedented $17.8 million in tax levy funding to help the transit system stretch out its federal funding, keeping the system in the black until 2026.

$15 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was allocated to the Connect 2 project. MCTS now plans to move that funding into its operational budget, buying itself another year and sustaining operations until 2028. In 2029, MCTS is facing a budget deficit projected at approximately $17 million, according to projections by the Office of the Comptroller. MCTS cannot add $6 million in operating costs to its budget without cutting $6 million elsewhere in the system.

“MCTS is very familiar with fiscal cliffs, so we are trying to do what we believe is fiscally responsible, to make sure that the system stays on a whole as it is currently,” Wandke said.

The work and funding already sunk into the Connect 2 is not lost. MCTS officials say it is only on the “shelf” right now, but it will remain there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Supervisors on the county board’s Committee on Transportation and Transit expressed disappointment at the loss of the Connect 2 project. Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez, whose district includes a large chunk of S. 27th Street, said the news was “a huge blow to my district.” Sup. Justin Bielinski commended MCTS for making a tough decision, adding that it’s “not one I’m happy with, but the realities are the realities.” Sup. Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones also said she wasn’t happy with the decision, “but if this gives us a cushion to keep us moving, I say, let’s do it.”

Losing the Connect 2 is the “canary in the coal mine” for the direction in which the system is headed, said David Locher, MCTS enhanced transit manager. The transit system is trying to hang onto the service it currently has, and will need to make cuts in 2029 unless new sources of revenue are secured.

“I’m Mr. BRT.” Locher said. “I love BRT, and I wish we could implement this project, but the truth is, to do cool things, it costs a little more annually to operate those cool things.”