Jack Connelly

JOUR 4932
09/29/22

As each minute passes the restlessness of the people around me increases exponentially.
Standing on the corner of Water and Wisconsin as I watch the hopes of everyone rise and fall as
another bus rolls through that is not their correct route. A route 15 bus barrels around the
construction of a future stop and lets one person off and none from our big waiting group get on.
The wait for a green line bus has gone over 25 minutes. It’s only 7:55 in the morning but I can
already see people having to call or text to explain that they will be late for their work or
wherever they are headed.
Every day for four days I took the same trip from the corner of 16th and Wisconsin to
General Mitchell Airport. I did this to get a sense of how daily riders of the Milwaukee County
Transit System view the system and how reliable it is for commuters who rely on it for work. I
would leave at 7:30 and try to be there by nine when most people would start their shifts. What I
learned from my experiences left me mainly hopeful for what the future of MCTS can hold.
When taking the bus from Marquette’s campus down to Water street all along the sides of
the road you can see the next stage of MCTS’s plans coming together. The East-West Bus Rapid
Transit project has been in the works here in Milwaukee since 2016 when work started to be
made on the project. East-West BRT is transforming a nine-mile stretch of road from Wauwatosa
to Wisconsin Avenue with new bus stops and a few miles of dedicated transit lanes to ease
congestion. Those big plans are still a few months away after global supply chain issues forced
the project to move from opening in October of 2022 to spring of 2023. The current state of the
project has left the side of the road down Wisconsin to be in a state of disaster. Every spot where
the old bus stops where is currently torn down and unusable. Every stop on the route has been
changed to a makeshift sign on the street corners dangerously close to the road. But with each
future stop that I would pass, my skepticism would subside for a moment as I was happy that
Milwaukee was investing in its bus routes.
It was 8:03 when the green line bus finally arrived at our stop and started taking me on
the rest of my morning's journey to General Mitchell Airport. Out of the four days that I made
this trip this was the only time that we had a significant delay in one of the buses arriving at my
stop. I was able to take the bus on the usually fifty-minute journey where I would arrive and then
immediately get onto another bus and head back.
Once this section of the East-West BRT is finished I am hoping that they will continue
this initiative onto other major roads throughout the city. The easier that they make it for transit
around the city the better it is for residents who want to seek out jobs outside of Milwaukee. As
only 40.4% of businesses that have high projections for hiring entry-level workers are within an
hour of the center of Milwaukee. The more of these streets that can be converted to have
dedicated bus and transit lanes the better for residents within the city. Giving communities within
Milwaukee better access to further out of the city where many new jobs are popping up.
 Each ride back to Marquette from General Mitchell gave me more chances to look at all
the work that is being done on MCTS. All of the dangerous makeshift stops will be gone by the
spring. And replaced by what is hopefully just the beginning of a whole new era of transportation
here in Milwaukee.