Are we ready?

All right.

Well start with the transit commission meeting for February 5th for the call to order.

Steve Cassins.

Kevin Riley.

Joel Piper.

Chair O'Neill.

Eric Payne.

We have a forum.

Then we'll go to the Pledge of Allegiance.

We can have the Cubscouts join us for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Do they want to come up front?

Yeah.

Come on up.

What troop are you guys from?

Oh 22.

Act 22?

Okay.

Great.

Well, you guys lead us lead us to the pledge, please.

Take your time so everybody can get their pictures.

You guys want to come up here?

Yeah, go right ahead.

And two of the republic for which it stands.

One nation.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Troop.

That'll be interviewing them.

That was the best pledge of allegiance we've had all year.

I mean, yours are okay.

This was special.

Any of that any public comments?

Seeing none, they're all leaving.

Well, or I entertain a motion for 4A.

This is Piper.

I'm I'll move to make a mo I'll move to approve the minutes of December 4th as presented.

Pay in seconds.

We have a motion and a second.

Any comments or questions?

Seeing none, we'll take a vote.

Cassins I.

Kevin Riley, I Piper, I.

O'Donnell I pay an aye.

Motion passes.

Item 5A.

Uh 5A is a Waukshaw County business item, and it's to review and act on the proposed uh 2026 flex ride contract with mobile eyes.

Um this item has come up this board last couple years.

Um Woksha County uh has again agreed to partially fund flex ride.

That's the on-demand service that serves portions of the city of Milwaukee to outlining uh employment centers, particularly in Monomie Falls and Butler.

And um they're uh wishing to do that again for 2026.

And um the actual operator of the services via But Mobilize, which is a transit advocacy group, um, is the one that actually holds that uh oversees flex ride, so the money is just going to uh mobilize and um like any contract for Waxha County, there's no city funds.

We are just the administrator Walkshaw County pays us to administer uh these contracts for them and oversee the contractor, so that's why the item is before us.

Um the total amount of funds that Waksha County would provide would be up to 350,000 for this year.

Um we would recommend approval.

Yep.

I'll this is Piper.

I'll make a motion to approve the item and with a second I have a question.

Kevin Riley seconds.

So Brian, this the 350,000, that's the that's the county funding portion, correct?

Yes.

What's the what's transits?

What is the admin?

What administrative fee do we get to run the program?

Uh well, it's part of our overall administrative fee for 26.

We'll get 96,000.

Okay, so it's rolled into the other administrative county.

Yeah, yeah, there's no separate okay allocation that's just rolled into that annual uh fee that the county pays us.

Gotcha.

And then this has been they've done this now for what how many years?

This is the third year.

Third year.

What's how's it been performing?

Do you have a sense of how it's working out?

Yeah, I participate in uh monthly meetings and I talked to Dave Steele, uh, who's the executive director of mobilize quite a bit.

And um it it it works very, very well.

That northeast corner of the county, the butler Monami Falls uh zone is very very effective.

And New Berlin is kind of in that same boat a little bit better, but the north zone that they call it that Butler Manami Falls is very, very strong, but it's the the most of the employees are coming from that north north central side of the city of Milwaukee.

It's a linear, shortlinear path to um Butler and Manami Falls.

So it's not surprising.

Yeah, I because I I have clients in all three areas, and I'm I remember passing this along to a couple of them, and I'll do the same.

And so this is it's a great it's a great program.

It just gotta get I think it as probably with anything, it's just getting awareness and getting employers aware of it, employees aware of it.

So okay, thank you.

Yep.

Uh I just have one question for so is this service actually coming to the city and taking people from the city?

For the is from the city of Milwaukee.

But not the city of Waukesha.

No, no, this is nothing.

This is strictly residents within the city of Milwaukee going to um uh employment opportunities in uh particularly the eastern side of Waksha County or southern Milwaukee County.

So it doesn't really affect uh the walkie shaw's transit no passenger riders in any great fashion, except if they were to take a long ride to one of these areas.

Correct, yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments?

And then we'll take a vote.

Casson's eye.

Kevin Rayleigh, I piper I.

Oh that's aye.

Motion passes.

Item 58B.

Uh 5B is to review and act on proposed bus stop changes.

This is really uh these bus stop changes are right around Lowell Elementary School, and this is kind of one of the few things that is changed with the school district uh approving their optimization program.

Originally Lowell was one of the schools that they're looking at eliminating, um, but now that they are committing uh longer term to that facility.

Um we just have a couple of quick uh changes to the bus stops.

There were when we changed the Route 8 to the routing on Route 8 last June.

It put two bus stops very close together, one at the corner of Michigan at Grandview on the southwest corner, and then one right around the corner on Grandview, just south of Michigan by the entrance of Lowell Elementary.

Um when we did the changes, we um asked that the stop on the corner be um eliminated uh because at that time the school district was planning on was isn't there in plan to eliminate low elementary, and we just we didn't really need the two stops and we figured traffic would be down, but now that the uh low is going to be used again, we feel just for safety of everyone in the area that we just eliminate the stop on Grandview by near the front entrance of Lowell and re uh reinstate the stop on the corner of Michigan and Grandview.

And then the other uh recommendation would be just to the west of on Michigan at western on the south side.

Uh we just recommend eliminating that bus stop.

It virtually has no ridership and so it doesn't make sense to keep that stop going, especially when there's stops close by entertain a motion.

Kevin Riley makes a motion to accept the proposed bus stop changes as written.

Piperal second.

Motion and a second any other questions or comments I guess.

I get go ahead, go ahead, Eric.

Um Michigan and Grandview.

Uh the stop is on Michigan, right?

Yes.

How far back?

Because that a lot of kids go across right there.

They cross there.

That's a busy place for the kids when they get out of school.

I know because I'm there every day.

Yeah.

Um, how far back from the intersection is it?

It it's pretty close to the intersection.

Okay.

Is the actual stop.

We don't really pick up or drop off a lot of kids at that time.

Uh uh usually elementary uh, you know, we're not really dropping or picking kids up at that.

It's more just adults in the area or dropping somebody off a student from the city.

There's a bus, I'm not maybe not sitting here, but there's a bus there every day at 340.

Yeah.

Turning because it turns the corner on to Grandview.

Yeah.

Okay.

No biggie.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Go ahead.

I Brian, I guess remind us, when we close a bus stop in and around a school, how much notice is the school district get that we're gonna do this?

Um, I mean, we would we can let them know.

I mean, we can, you know, if we're if we're going to do this, we typically don't you know, even if it gets when it goes to the council gets approved, we usually give it some kind of a buffer of at least a couple weeks and such, you know, to do that.

So I mean, we we can do something, you know, we don't really have a hard hard and fast rule on that.

I mean, I I I mean, we've moved bus stops around schools for as long as I've been on the board.

Yeah.

Is the school board ever come back and said really don't want you to do that with a bus stop?

Not with elementary schools, no.

Okay.

Yeah, we we our elementary school ridership is minimal.

Which would it make sense, yeah.

So okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions or comments?

Let's take a vote.

Cassens I.

Kevin Riley, I piper I.

Motion carries.

Uh 6A is just the 2025 ridership reports.

I know in December we did talk about like the three-quarter year report.

Um, so I do have it up on the screen.

Hopefully, you can see it.

Um, but just a recap uh for the fixed route service.

We did have a two percent decrease from 2024.

Um, one thing I will point out though, is just a reminder that we did do with the route consolidation in June.

We cut 15% of the service hours.

So it was expected in the second half of the year that we were going to see uh ridership decreases.

So we're actually a I'm a little bit surprised that uh the aggregate change wasn't a little bit more.

I was kind of targeting a three, three and a quarter percent decrease.

So that was good to see, especially with the less than pleasant weather we had this December.

Um, you know, it wasn't as bad as we thought.

Um and then uh for metro lift again.

We've we've talked about this in the past, but we ended up finishing just about 25 percent uh increase for the year.

And over the past um three years, we've had a 61% increase in the graph below.

You can really see how MetroLift ridership's taken off, and it's the highest metro lift ridership we've had since 2012.

Um so it's good to see.

Um just flipping back to the fixed route with the changes, the consolidation and the changes we did have a nine percent increase in the efficient ridership efficiency, which is measured by the passengers per hour of service.

Um we went we were at 8.6 for 2025, up from 7.9, so that was a 9% increase.

And when we looked at the ridership pass uh from the when we did the consolidation in June, from June to December, our ridership per hour was actually at 9.0.

So the ridership efficiency coming out of COVID, which I still uh consider like 2021, you know, it's increased 37%.

So that's what we wanted to see because we were down quite a bit in COVID.

So that that's all trending in the right direction on both fronts.

Both are efficiency for fixed route ridership and ridership overall for MetroLift.

Um the other thing I just wanted to point out just a little bit more detail on the ridership for fixed route.

Um it just kind of the uh showed this last year.

This was only the second time we've done this.

I think I I kind of like uh showing this to you because then you get a better feel and for the public to get a better feel of the makeup of our ridership.

And one thing I'll point out is these yellow um highlighted routes, those are the routes that were discontinued in June.

Uh as you can see they were small amounts, smaller amounts, so they kind of got absorbed into these larger routes.

But obviously, Route 1 is a significant portion, and then route four and nine.

Um, but we just the show the makeup of the routes.

And then the last thing I just wanted to show is at the bottom of this page is the ridership efficiency by route, the passenger per hour, and route four and route five do very, very well.

Um these are shorter routes.

Um, but the uh thing want to point out is it's a half hour round trip, but also trips from the transit center, like on Route 4 to Walmart, it's 13 minutes.

So it's very competitive with the car.

And so in the five, it's 12 minutes to the shops of Fox River.

So kind of compet when we can compete decently with the with cars and we have a very efficient route, we'll have very efficient numbers.

Um route one then is at the next highest at 8.2.

And that actually went up when we look at the second half of the year, it was actually at about nine, um, which is good because it's the highest uh highest ridership route.

So wanted to show you this, but also it also kind of gives you uh a feel and for the public watching.

These are things that we look at.

I look at particular and look at some of these routes at that aren't performing as well.

It kind of explains why like back in the middle of January we made the changes to Route 6 in particular where we eliminated 10% of the service hours because it's not performing as well as the the rest of the system.

So it they're just barometers for us to you know keep an eye on, um, make sure our efficiency is where it should be.

So with that, I can take any questions.

So Brian, I guess a couple of things when I think of capital and vehicles.

It and I know this is I think you brought this up the last time we talked about metro lifts, but it seems like we're gonna need to start shifting fleet towards metro lift, and that's adding capacity there.

So I guess that's one point.

And then the second point is just around fixed route ridership and remind and remind me because I never remember what what's the standard length of bus that we typically purchase?

Uh we purchase a 35-foot uh bus.

So Gillig makes 29, 35, and 40 foot buses.

Correct.

So I guess my my point is is if we're seeing the passenger per hour, I guess my point would be is I think we need to start thinking more about shifting to a smaller bus and going down to a 29, a 29 foot bus.

Because I still I can imagine that you can still get eight people on a 29-foot bus.

There's literally uh it's less than a one percent decrease in cost to go go to that on the capital side.

Yeah.

I I could I could show you the state contract that we buy it off of.

There's literally it's about a one percent decrease.

I'd be I'd be interested in that because we I can send it.

I mean, Eric and I hear this all the time about bus ridership, and we we know the statistics, and we've you know we've done a nice job of of talking to constituent about it.

But when you see data like this, it points to okay.

Do we have are we do we have an overcapacity issue?

But if you have data that will help Eric and I when we get these calls, yes, definitely.

I can we can show the cost differential, that would be helpful.

Yeah, and I guess the other point would be then is do we shift do we go down to more of a metro lift style of bus for some of these for some of these routes that we don't have as much ridership on and shift completely away from like a larger gillig bus?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, keep in mind we did have via do that study last year of looking at on demand, and they did not uh if they if they thought it was worthy, they would have tried to um solicit their services to run the service for us, and they didn't uh the only thing that they felt at the time was to operate uh the five and six and the fifteen on the weekend, and the fifteen only runs on Saturday, and five and six now run limited service on Sunday.

So yeah, it's it's something that's an evolving uh matter.

And I think one of the things too, as we try and make the system more efficient, we're pushing more people on to the the on fewer trips.

But it the but the a metro lift style bus is gonna be cheaper than even a 29-foot gilly bus, right?

Uh yes, it is, but it's not gonna last as long.

It's gonna get the systems our size do not make they they are were they're required to last seven years, and I don't think they would last that long, even on like say a route six, it is they're just not built for that kind of load.

Okay.

Well, I again nothing we're gonna solve tonight.

Yeah, I just wanted to just I when I see data like this, that's where my head goes.

And I think it'd be you know, I I'd enjoy a further conversation, you know, with with you, Alex, and with you and Alex about this going forward.

So absolutely thank you, sir.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Do we need to make a vote?

Uh no, it's just a matter of report.

Is that it?

You're good.

All right.

All right, Garrett Hearn.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brian.