When
FlexRide, a subsidized rideshare service designed to connect workers living in Milwaukee's central city with suburban jobs, launched in March 2022 with service to job sites in Menomonee Falls, it had five or 10 riders.
Two years later, the service now provides 4,000 rides per month on average to hundreds of users. And just last month it marked a major milestone, having provided a total of 60,000 rides to workers since its inception.
As
MobiliSE – the nonprofit that worked with regional transportation officials to develop the service – looks ahead to 2025, it’s first full year without federal funding,
MobiliSE executive director Dave Steele said he’s confident the program can attract the kind of support it will need to continue.
When it was still in its infancy, the program received a $4.2 million Workforce Innovation Grant from the state of Wisconsin, and then another $1.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding from Milwaukee County.
That money helped to ramp up the program, increasing the size of its fleet, which now sits at 11 vans, and attracting more drivers and riders, as well as suburban employers able to use the service to attract would-be employees from the city.
While the Workforce Innovation Grant can be extended through the middle of 2025 if any funds are left over at the end of 2024, Steele said MobiliSE is already working diligently to replace that funding.
“The main strength that we have is the success of the program. We have a lot of companies that really have come to rely on FlexRide to give them access to more employees, so we're optimistic that we'll be able to continue this because the value is clearly there” he said. “I mean, people are using this service. Many of our riders are relying on it (to get to work).”
Steele added that a lot of the ARPA and Workforce Innovation Grant program grants that were handed out were designed to test out new ideas, like FlexRide.
“That's how we were able to get our funding through the state because they were looking for innovative ideas that were kind of being piloted. But we've shown that the program has success, it has some legs, and we're optimistic we'll be able to find sustainable funding moving forward.”
Growth and support
Designed to link workers on Milwaukee’s north, south and west sides with jobs in places like Menomonee Falls, Franklin, Oak Creek and New Berlin, FlexRide was created by MobiliSE (formerly the Regional Transit Leadership Council) as a way to provide transportation between areas of the city where workers were less likely to have cars to employment hubs in the suburbs.
Where previous efforts to connect workers in the city to jobs in the suburbs had mostly focused on bus service – the ill-fated
JobLines routes that served Menomonee Falls, Germantown and New Berlin were cancelled in 2019 after Milwaukee County Transit System ran out of money – FlexRide operates like a rideshare service-turned neighborhood carpool.
For $3 a ride – or free if they walk or take a bus to a centralized pickup zone – workers in
certain sections of the city’s north, south and west sides can get a ride to dozens of job sites in Franklin, New Berlin, Butler, and Menomonee Falls. Riders call for rides from their phones, but often share rides with others and are picked up from “virtual stops” near their homes. The vans are fully branded and fit five passengers. The service employs about 15 part-time drivers, a few of whom are retired city bus drivers.
“Our riders fall into three main buckets. About one-third are using it every day. The others might use it two or three times a week. Or maybe they have a car at home, and they use it once, maybe twice to go to a job interview,” Steele said. “It is just like any form of transportation. It is there when you need it.”
While the four JobLines routes, which were primarily funded with the proceeds from a lawsuit settlement, cost about $3.37 million a year to run in 2018 dollars, FlexRide’s annual budget is about $2.5 million, Steele said.
Employers
When the service was launched, it initially only connected north side workers to jobs in Menomonee Falls. In October of 2023 it was expanded to include employment centers in Franklin and New Berlin.
Today, Menomonee Falls remains the destination for 90% of FlexRide users, who count on the service for rides out to employers like
FedEx,
Arandell Corp.,
Kohl’s Corp.,
Froedtert Menomonee Falls Hospital and
Scan-Pac Manufacturing Inc.
But employers to the west and south are also beginning to draw and keep more and more workers thanks to the service, including FedEx in New Berlin,
Carlisle Interconnect Technologies in Franklin,
Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital - Franklin Campus, and
Furlani Foods in Oak Creek
“We’ve been averaging about 400 rides per month (out to the south and west),” Steele said. “All told there have been 185 companies that have used FlexRide. I would say that your typical Flexride company is a smaller firm with 50-100 employees.”
Fred Anderson, president and CEO of New Berlin-based
Wenthe-Davidson Engineering, Co., which makes electric motor, generator housing, steel tubular housing, emissions housing for companies like ABB and Generac, said many workers at the company – 42% of whom live in central city neighborhoods in Milwaukee – have grown to rely on FlexRide since it began serving the New Berlin employment zone last fall.
“Their biggest concerns, believe it or not, are not making motor housings… their concern is their families – getting their kids to a good childcare. That’s the first step, taking care of their families, then it is getting here. … We used to have bus service. But they were on the bus for two and a half hours. That is not sustainable,” Anderson said at an October event celebrating the launch of the New Berlin service.
Today, Wenthe-Davidson is the largest FlexRide user in the New Berlin zone. Employees who once had to rely on rides from family members when their normal work transportation fell through, use FlexRide as a failsafe option to get to work. Others rely on it as their main form of work transportation.
“These employees have let us know how vital it was for them as their primary vehicle was in for repairs or being used by another family member. This allowed them to keep working,” said
Rob Ewing, vice president of operations for Wenthe-Davidson, which employs 215 people. “Other employees started to use FlexRide as their primary transportation and let us know that they didn’t know how they could have made it to work without the service.”
Looking ahead
As FlexRide users and boosters seek new financial support for the program going into 2025, Steele said it will be key to illustrate to state lawmakers and county board supervisors in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties, how useful the service is. Waukesha County allocated $10,000 to the program in 2022, 2023, and 2024. With the budget process still months away, it is not clear if funds will be earmarked for it in 2025, however.
“People ask, well, what can we do to help? And I think my appeal is to any business leader that wants to see this program continue is just make sure that your county board members, your state legislators know the importance of the program,” he said. “They know that the program is working and that it's a worthy investment, because the return on that investment is that we get more people employed and more jobs filled.”
Steele also noted that philanthropic partners could continue to help support the program, as well.
“It was a smaller amount of money compared to the government funding, but
Bader Philanthropies, the
United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County – both of them funded our program even before we ever got any government funding,” he said. “They really stepped up in the early days before FlexRide even existed – when it was just an idea – to help us get organized and put the program together.”
When it comes down to it, though, the strength of the program really rests in its riders, Steele said, and the continuing need to get workers out to jobsites where they are needed.
“If you have a car, 10 miles is nothing, but if you don't have a car, that can be a huge barrier,” he said.
