The 2020 annual report from MCTS said it's 'unclear' whether ridership levels will return to pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, ridership was down to 22.6 million. In 2019, Wisconsin residents rode on those transit systems 48.5 million times, according to the report. But shelter-in-place policies created even steeper drops.Īn April 2022 study by the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that bus ridership was down about 50 percent across Milwaukee County and the cities of Appleton, Eau Claire, Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Oshkosh, Racine and Waukesha. Transit agencies around the country were seeing declining ridership even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, that number dropped again, to 14.3 million rides. One year later, that number dropped to 15.5 million, a nearly 50 percent decrease. 'The good news is that ridership is definitely bouncing back,' said Kristina Hoffman, director of marketing and communications for MCTS.Įven so, in 2019 MCTS racked up nearly 29 million rides. The Milwaukee County Transit System is seeing an increase in ridership this year compared to last, but numbers are still not as high as they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.Īs of this week, the transit system will have given nearly 1.1 million more rides than this time last year, for a total of 8.5 million.

Milwaukee transit services