It's Even Worse Than I Thought

Green Bay Metro's long-term bus passes, paratransit fares to increase for first time since 2020
Portrait of Jesse Lin Jesse Lin
Green Bay Press-Gazette   11/21/2024

GREEN BAY — Through the pandemic era and a period of rapid inflation, Green Bay Metro bus fares haven't increased in nearly five years. That streak was broken Wednesday when the Transit Commission's decision raised the cost of long-term bus passes while keeping the price of a single ride steady.

Effective Jan. 1, the several bus passes affected by the commission's decision are:

Adult Weekly Pass: From $15 to $16, a 6.6% increase.
Adult 30-Day Pass: From $39 to $41, a 5.1% increase.
Student 30-Day Pass: For K-12 students with a valid ID, from $26 to $28, a 7.6% increase.
Reduced 30-Day Pass: meant for persons with impairments that prevent them from using mass transit without great difficulty, will go from $29 to $31, a 6.8% increase.
Paratransit Agency Fare: for organizations that serve low-income, disabled, or elderly persons will go from $19 to $21 for a one-way trip, a 10.5% increase.

The single ride ticket will remain $2 and the day pass will stay at $4.

The agency doesn't publish how many riders use bus passes or organizations that pay the Paratransit Agency Fare, but its most recent annual study published in December 2023 showed just over 725,000 passengers used its bus routes in 2022; ridership consistently surpassed 1 million riders before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

But for the transit agency, it's the first time since Jan. 2, 2020, that its raised its rates on riders.

When COVID-19 quarantines went into effect in March 2020, they took 31.2% of the agency's fare revenue and over 200,000 riders with them by the end of the 2020 calendar year, according to the most recent annual study completed in 2023.

The study showed expenses for the agency grew 12.8% during the height of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, going from about $6.5 million to $7.4 million, not that the agency was depending on bus fares for operations in the first place.

Allocations from the budgets of the federal government, the state, and the five municipalities that the agency's bus routes serve have long funded the vast majority of its budget, always hovering around 80% of its total budget since 2018.

In 2025, bus fares would only account for 13.2%, or just over $1.1 million, of its nearly $9 million budget, as was estimated back in 2023.

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