Author Archives: Julia Tanenbaum

How Riders Saved the SMRT Bus: A Grassroots Transit Victory in Southwest Wisconsin

A conversation with Cathy Van Maren, President of the Wisconsin Transit Riders Alliance. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

By Julia Tanenbaum

Julia Tanenbaum: How did you first get involved in transit advocacy, particularly with La Crosse Area Transit Advocates and the Wisconsin Transit Riders Alliance?

Cathy Van Maren: I’ve been a transit rider my whole life. I found the Wisconsin Transit Riders Alliance several years ago and started attending meetings. At the time, there wasn’t a local transit advocacy group in La Crosse, though I knew people involved in similar efforts in Eau Claire. I thought we should have one too.

Julia: When you started La Crosse Area Transit Advocates around 2017, what were the group’s initial goals?

Cathy: I had some friends who had moved to town and family who were car free. And so they were transit advocates. We began meeting to organize things like rides with elected officials. We partnered with the local transit utility on events like open houses. During election years, we surveyed candidates. Our goals are to advocate for better service, to support what service we have, and to educate our community.

Julia: Can you explain what the Scenic Mississippi Regional Transit (SMRT) system is and who it serves?

Cathy: SMRT is a regional transit system operating across four or five counties. It originally developed to connect the small community of Prairie du Chien with La Crosse, so people could travel there for work. I think that a study that was done a few years ago said 35,000 people come into La Crosse for work daily. 

Peter Fletcher helped promote it to major employers such as Mayo Clinic, Gundersen Health (now Emplify), Organic Valley, area colleges, and other municipalities. It was started as a commuter service, but students, older people, non-drivers, and others benefited. 

Julia: Who are the primary riders today, and what impact has SMRT had on the region?

Cathy: There hasn’t been a formal economic impact study, but my guess is that riders are mostly employees but also include non-drivers. They include members of the Amish community across Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, students and employees at Western Technical College and UW-La Crosse, and non-drivers. People use it because they can’t drive because of medical conditions or disabilities or even because they don’t want to drive on dangerous winter roads. 

Julia: Given all of that, why did La Crosse and Vernon Counties consider cutting funding in 2025?

Cathy: Since COVID employment patterns and work patterns have changed. I believe that that had an impact on the number of riders over the last few years. And then in 2019  they added a route from La Crosse to Tomah.

And at that time, they switched the operation management from Prairie du Chien to La Crosse. And when they did that, there was not one person whose job was to administer the SMRT, but rather they added it on to somebody else’s responsibilities. As issues came up with equipment or ridership levels or funding, that person was unable to devote the necessary time to fixing them.

As a result, when ridership dipped and costs rose, the county’s contribution jumped from about $30,000 to over $150,000. Without a champion or even a dedicated manager, decision-makers, none of whom take the SMRT, concluded the bus wasn’t being used.

The decision to end the service was taken by the county administrator without much input from the public or discussion by the elected county board supervisors. This process was a disturbing surprise to riders, advocates, some partners, and electeds. That helped us activate riders. We gathered 800 plus signatures on petitions and people showed up to tell their stories at meetings. It made a difference.

Julia: What was the response from the community and what tactics did people employ to make the board understand the importance of the SMRT bus?

Cathy: For the Week Without Driving in late September, our Sierra Club hosted a Transit to Trails ride on the SMRT bus to draw attention to transit access to natural recreation areas. When we did that I noticed the person who had been administering the SMRT was suddenly not there anymore. 

And then people found out about the budget cuts by word of mouth. We found out about it on September 30th officially from the bus riders. And we just said, well, let’s start a petition. Word spread quickly, including through the Amish community. 

People wrote letters to the editor and created fliers. They definitely wrote to the La Crosse County Board and then to their county board if they didn’t live in the county. A guy who can’t even take the SMRT bus because he lived in another community came up with a poster that people could put up. It was sincerely totally grassroots with zero budget.

And then we had other people in other communities like Viroqua who were very active. One woman had a birthday party and invited everybody to sign the petition for her birthday present.There was a No Kings rally and somebody took a petition and had people sign it there. 

Julia: Were there any moments that really stood out during public testimony?

Cathy: Several stories had a big impact on the County Board. One elected official spoke both as a peer and as a rider about the economic benefits of having people be able to get to jobs and the benefits of reduced congestion. 

Another rider who lives in one of the little towns along the way described using the SMRT bus for emergency eye surgery. She went to the hospital in her community and the doctor said “You have to get to La Crosse right away or you’re going to lose your sight.” With nobody available to drive her, she used the SMRT bus to get emergency surgery and return home after. 

A third speaker talked about her brother, a non-driver with a brain injury, who relies on SMRT for medical care in La Crosse. She spoke about how meeting other riders has also had a very positive impact on his life and outlook and well-being.

Julia: Was there a turning point for restoring the funding?

Cathy:
 A county board member told me the stories and contact from riders was “moving the needle.” We had a champion on the County Board in Dillon Mader, who works with formerly incarcerated people at Western Technical College and understands how critical transportation access is. When he originally brought this up the steering committee of officers voted it down. It really was a nail biter. 

Julia: What can transit advocates in Wisconsin and beyond learn from this?

Cathy: The more riders who can tell their stories, the better. As we know, a lot of transit riders are low income. Or maybe they have a lot of different jobs. So they may not have a lot of time to attend meetings. But if they can write a letter and mail it or call or email, that can make a difference. And so advocates should find ways to make it easier for riders to tell their stories to electeds.

My other takeaway was that a lot of people who are making decisions about transit need a lot more education and information about how transit systems work. Few to none use public transit. Buses should really be thought of more like roads than vehicles, infrastructure that needs to have the capacity to serve the numbers of riders expected each day.
If I said nobody’s on my street, which is true, so does that mean we should rip it up? Especially when you’re talking about rural public transit, where there’s miles and miles between stops. 

The other thing is our SMRT system is operated by a for-profit business. And that’s where most of the money goes. Somebody is making a profit off of this.

So I think that’s another thing advocates need to tell to make sure people know that there are a lot of models that don’t involve a for-profit business sucking up public money to do a service that we could do ourselves. This is the same thing with VIA, that microtransit business. Do we want public money to go to private businesses? Personally, I don’t. But maybe there are other ways to do things.

 

Cathy Van Maren has lived in La Crosse for decades and has been a bicycle commuter and public transportation fan since childhood. Now retired, she’s working to expand and improve public transportation options locally, regionally, and state-wide. She is the President of the Wisconsin Transit Rider’s Alliance. 

Julia Tanenbaum is a library worker and a freelance web developer and content creator for the Wisconsin Transit Rider’s Alliance, Madison Area Bus Advocates, and Dane County Non-Drivers. She is a lifelong user of public transportation and an advocate of public transportation as an essential public good.

 

Will Wisconsin Get on Board with Fast and Fare-Free Transit?

November 23, 2025 | Julia Tanenbaum 

New York City just elected a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, on a bold platform centered on alleviating the cost of living crisis in the city. Democratic Socialist Mamdani made “fast, fare free buses” one of his signature campaign promises, focusing on improving mobility for everyday New Yorkers. In Seattle voters elected another progressive mayor, co-founder of the Seattle Transit Riders Union Katie Wilson. Wilson also ran on a platform of making mass transit fast, frequent, reliable, and affordable. These victories are a national signal of widespread public support for accessible and affordable public transit. It’s a signal Wisconsin cannot afford to ignore.

Fast and Free Busses

Mamdani’s campaign highlighted a simple truth. Almost one in five New Yorkers struggles to afford bus fares, and low income New Yorkers are facing a particularly high financial burden. Mamdani implemented a successful fare-free bus pilot program on five lines across NYC from 2023 to 2024. The program increased ridership by 30 percent on weekdays and 38 percent on weekends. His policy plan includes expanding this program city wide while also making buses faster by using tools like priority lanes, bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones.

The Wisconsin Transit Riders Alliance (WTRA) has long advocated for reducing barriers to using transit here at home in Wisconsin. Our statewide proposal includes a Fare-Free feasibility study that would measure the potential impact on ridership, transit equity, and local economies. ​ Removing fare barriers could improve mobility for tens of thousands of Wisconsinites, from low income families to seniors to youth. Fare-free transit systems in the United States have consistently shown significant increases in ridership ranging from 21% to over 200%. Reducing barriers to using public transit seems expensive, but generates economic benefits in the long term. According to Economist Charles Komanoff, fare free transit increases access to jobs, education, and healthcare. It’s time to seriously consider fast, fare-free buses in Wisconsin, starting with the feasibility study WTRA has been calling for.

Adequately Funding Public Transit

Mamdani and Wilson’s campaigns demonstrate that excellent public services, from transit to affordable housing, require real investment. In Wisconsin, we must restore funding for public transit operations if we want faster, safer, more reliable service. In 2010, state leaders cut funding to transit by 10%, and it has never fully been restored. In 2021 the Legislature slashed state transit funding for Milwaukee and Madison by 50%. This chronic underfunding limits the reliability and frequency of public transit while forcing fare increases. Wisconsin can and must do better. We must reinstate historic levels of state operational funding for transit, which once covered 50-65% of transit costs while also enabling new sources of funding like Regional Transportation Authorities. Increasing funding would help our cities put more buses on the road, more frequently, and at a lower cost to riders. Wisconsin could fund students commuting to school, provide financial assistance to low income families, conduct the fare-free feasibility study, and more. Both urban and rural Wisconsinites suffer from budget cuts. Non-drivers comprise almost a third of Wisconsin’s population, and they live in every county across the state. The good news is that everyday riders statewide are uniting to push our cities and state government to fund public transit like the essential service it is.

Our Vision

Mamdani’s win gives me hope that riders across the country can unite in favor of fast, safe, and affordable public transit. Restoring transit funding is also an urgent task, because our current system leaves behind non-drivers who need better services to access work, medical care, and even polling places. Our transit challenges can be solved with the right vision and political will. The WTRA Strategic Plan lays out a roadmap to improve access to transit for all Wisconsinites. In our vision of Wisconsin everyone can get where they need to go on safe, fast, and affordable public transit, whether they live in Milwaukee or a small town in the Northwoods.

We need your help to turn this vision into reality. Together, we can demand fast, frequent, and fare free local buses that serve our communities. We can demand a legislature that invests in public transit as an essential need and public good. Most importantly, we can demand that every Wisconsin resident has the freedom, dignity and mobility that quality public transit provides.

Bio:

Julia Tanenbaum is a library worker and a freelance web developer and content creator for the Wisconsin Transit Rider’s Alliance, Madison Area Bus Advocates, and Dane County Non-Drivers. She is a lifelong user of public transportation and an advocate of public transportation as an essential public good. She lived in Madison for three years while working as an archivist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, during which time she took the bus almost every day. She recently returned to Los Angeles County, where she is also taking the bus and train. She also works as a curator for the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood, California.