On Wednesday acting County Executive Lee Holloway announced he is running to keep that job in a special election cycle that will take place this year.

Mr. Holloway was sworn in as acting County Executive earlier this week but he is hardly new to responsibility. As regular readers of The MTRU Blog and Milwaukee Transit Riders Union members know already, Mr. Holloway was serving his second full term until he resigned to focus on his duties as acting County Executive. Mr. Holloway is Milwaukee County’s first African-American County Executive.

Mr. Holloway is a member of the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority and an outspoken proponent of finding a dedicated source of funding to stabilize the Milwaukee County Transit System. According to his website (www.holloway2011.com )
he will restore at least some of the bus service that was cut under former County Executive Scott Walker.

About the election
The primary election will take place on February 15, 2011 if there are more than two candidates running. The general election will be April 5, 2011.

Milwaukee County is responsible for bus service. The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union encourages every bus rider to learn more about Mr. Holloway and the other candidates so that we can make our voices heard. Bus service needs to be improved. It’s time to move forward.

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union will be having it’s first meeting of 2011 on Wednesday January 5, 2011 at 6:00 PM at the ATU Local 998 hall at 734 N. 26th Street (rear hall/parking lot entrance).

The topics for the meeting will be:

1. Milwaukee Transit Riders Union’s annual budget
2. How will transit be impacted in Gov. Scott Walker’s first term
3. Brainstorming about how to affect transit improvement with a new
   Milwaukee County Executive
4. Discussion on the April special elecion for Milwaukee County
   Executive
5. Brainstorming on outreach techniques for 2011

The meeting schedule for the new year will be released at this meeting and posted online on the same day.

Download the flier for the meeting here

In order to better network with Milwaukee area bus riders, we are opening a message board at www.forum.transitridersunion.org.

We hope that this message board will become a place for concerned people to network about the future of transit in the region, the current state of regional transit and ways to make it better.

Registration is quick and only takes a few seconds. If you don’t want to register, you can log into the forum by using Facebook Login (formerly Facebook Connect). Logging into the forum is safe and your password remains private.

In a move that surprised no one, Talgo announced today that it will be pulling it’s operations out of Milwaukee and closing it’s plant at 27th and Townsend Streets, which was the former A. O. Smith/Tower Automotive complex.

This comes after Gov-Elect Scott Walker (R) was able to stop the Wisconsin segment of the Midwest High Speed Rail network from being constructed and got the $810 million sent to other states. For more info on the highspeed rail network, visit www.midwesthsr.org

Talgo will remain open until 2012 when it finishes building train cars for the existing Amtrak Hiawatha rail line. After that order is complete, Talgo will leave Milwaukee for good and with it the promise of hundereds of good-paying jobs to the fourth-poorest city in America.

As regular readers here already know, the Milwaukee County Transit System is going to have several cuts in service as per the Milwaukee County Budget.

This is how Scott Walker celebrates 150 years of public transit in Milwaukee.

On and after January 2, 2011 , three routes will be gone completely, two routes will be slightly modified to compensate for two of the route eliminations and thirteen routes will have Saturday service and frequency reductions to match Sunday/Holiday schedules.

Download a list of all the 2010-2011 Milwaukee County Transit System cuts here.

Download the announcement for the eliminated routes here.

“While it is difficult to reduce service frequency and eliminate flyer routes, these changes will help to maintain the mainline system which is so vital to the community,” stated Anita Gulotta-Connelly, MCTS Managing Director. With all due respect to Mrs. Gulotta-Connelly, as we understand that she has a tough job trying to maintain a viable transit system in the face of a broken funding system, we can’t see this as anything but an attack on the mainline system. Saturday service will be sharply reduced on mainline routes, like the 10, 11, 12, 14 35 and 80 just to name a few routes. (See above PDF for all routes affected.) These routes are core routes where passengers often suffer overcrowded buses.

We can expect to see even more overcrowding on routes 10, 12, 14, 35 and 80 as these are busy and long routes. We can also expect more late buses as there will be more stopping of these buses since there will be more passengers getting on and off. We want to remind our members and other riders not to automatically blame the drivers. They are as much victims of this as we are, since they are seeing yet another degradation of their work environment. A lot of times these schedules are flawed and do not take these increased stops into account. The result of that is a bus schedule that is impossible to make and may not get corrected for a few months. Please be patient with the drivers as they are not to blame for the cuts and they do not determine the routes.

If you want to complain about these cuts, constructive ways to do so is to fill out the form on the announcement and mail it in, or call your county supervisor. You can find out who he/she is here, or you can type your address into this form to find out your county supervisory district. You can also complain to Scott Walker, who is the man who insisted that Milwaukee County Transit had to be cut.

Scott Walker can be reached many ways:

1. By email at: countyexec@milwcnty.com
2. By mail at: County Executive Scott Walker, 901 N. 9th St., Milwaukee County Courthouse Room 306, Milwaukee, WI 53233-1458
3. By phone at: (414) 278-4211
4. By fax at: (414) 223-1375

Alternatively, you can contact Scott Walker’s transition office as he is due to resign his County Executive post soon. The website for the transition site is www.transition.wi.gov. You can contact his transition office many ways:

1. By using the Citizen Suggestion form at: http://www.transition.wi.gov/stateemployee_suggestion.asp?locid=177.
2. By email at: transition@wisconsin.gov.
3. By mail at: Office of the Governor-Elect Scott Walker, 17 W. Main St. Suite 310, Madison, WI 53703

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union expects there to be a funding crisis in 2011. This crisis was delayed by the stimulus, but not solved. Check back here for updates and consider joining.

The Milwaukee County Board approved the elimination of Routes 39, 45 & 47 on Monday November 8, as well as Saturday schedule reductions on Routes 10, 11, 12, 14, 31, 33, 35, 51, 53, 54 ,57, 67 and 80. Sunday schedules will be run all weekend on these routes.

This is a rather drastic cut, since it will affect all who ride the bus on Saturdays, especially affecting those who work on Saturdays.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Spreadsheet of all County Board-approved cuts to the Milwaukee County Transit System