Milwaukee Transport Services, the non-profit that currently manages the Milwaukee County Transit System, has filed an appeal to the decision to award the management contract to the Dallas, TX based for-profit corporation MV Transportation. This appeal is connected to the lawsuit filed challenging the decision.
The appeal revealed that MV Transportation actually received the lowest technical score, meaning that MV got the lowest score on the portion of its bid describing how it would provide the actual bus services to riders. That section of the evaluation was supposed to count for 80% of the total score used to determine which company would be awarded the contract.
This shows a complete disregard for bus riders. Despite claims by the County that it was trying to improve the bus system by turning over operations to a private corporation, we have seen from the actions of this panel that this was not the intention.
The entire justification for awarding the bid to MV Transpotation seems to revolve around cost. MV has given a the County a low-ball offer for administrative costs.
| Provider | Administrative Price |
|---|---|
| US Average for Similar Transit Systems | About 18% of total budget. |
| Milwaukee Transport Services | About 14% of total budget. |
| MV Transportation | About 4% of total budget. |
The County did not compare the proposals with the actual figures from similar bus systems to MCTS. A comparison shows that Milwaukee is already has one of the lowest administrative costs and that MV’s offer is probably “too good to be true”.
| Provider | Administrative Costs |
|---|---|
| Minneapolis (Metro) | 13.56% of total budget. |
| Milwaukee (MCTS) | 13.86% of total budget. |
| Pittsburgh (Port Authority) | 13.92% of total budget. |
| Kansas City (KCATA) | 15.89% of total budget. |
| Cincinnati (Metro) | 16.31% of total budget. |
| Louisville (TARC) | 16.38% of total budget. |
| St. Louis (Metro) | 17.06% of total budget. |
| Columbus (COTA) | 17.30% of total budget. |
| Cleveland (GCRTA) | 19.14% of total budget. |
| Indianapolis (IndyGo) | 19.36% of total budget. |
| Detroit (DDOT) | 19.71% of total budget. |
| Alameda (AC Transit) | 20.97% of total budget. |
| Providence (RIPTA) | 22.43% of total budget. |
| Denver (RTD) | 22.44% of total budget. |
| US Average for Similar Transit Systems | 17.74% of total budget. |
| MV Transportation | 4.03% of total budget. |
MV Transportation did not disclose how they came up with this extremely low figure. We believe that this is cause for concern and something that should be looked into.
There is an Administrative Determination Review Committee that is looking over the decision to transfer the operations of the transit system to MV Transportation. The committee was scheduled to meet Tuesday, but that has been cancelled due to the extreme cold weather.