Milwaukee County officials announced yesterday that MV Transportation, a Texas-based, for-profit company to manage the Milwaukee County Transit System.
This is a big change from the status-quo, currently the bus system is run by Milwaukee Transport Services, Inc., a non-profit organization created in 1975 to run the bus system.
This will take MCTS further down the road of privatization. MCTS has operated like a non-profit or government organization up until now. If the contract is approved it will go into effect January 1, 2014; at that point MCTS will start operating like a for-profit business and try to turn a profit off of our fares.
What does this mean for Milwaukee bus riders?
Privatization often means paying less for more. Milwaukee bus riders have been somewhat insulated from this by a provision in the request for proposals, but we still have several concerns:
- Passenger amenities MCTS has, in recent years, has attempted to add amenities to the bus system and make it more enjoyable to ride. Privatization and the profit motive exerts downward pressure on the budget for amenities and capital improvements – making transit much less pleasant to ride… even making it downright unpleasant to ride.
- Employees’ working conditions While many riders don’t realize it, the working conditions for transit employees do affect us. We benefit from having a bus system that can attract good, polite drivers and attentive maintenance workers. Profit-driven transit results in declining working conditions for transit employees, which puts us directly at risk of being involved in accidents and degrades the quality of our rides.
- Service Cuts The concerns listed above contribute to a negative perception of public transportation and make it less attractive as a travel option to people who have other options. This will result in less people riding the bus, which will result in less revenue and more cuts to service.
As a result, we stand against this and other proposals to privatize our system.