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Valley Transit reports ridership decline, pauses driver recruitment amid staffing shortage
Summary
Valley Transit presented November–December financials and ridership data showing a year-to-date ridership decline, reported an ongoing driver shortage that led staff to pause new recruitments, and announced retirement of long-serving grants/finance staffer Deb.
Valley Transit staff told the board the agency’s November and December financial and ridership reports show ongoing operational pressures and a continuing staffing shortfall.
Finance staff Kristen told the board the November payments totaled about $551,000 with line items including roughly $54,000 in admin costs, $91,000 in vehicle maintenance and $170,000 in building maintenance; she flagged a $65,000 installment to GMV Synchromatics for a hardware upgrade and a $167,000 payment to Kooning Architects for engineering on the Whitman project. December payments increased to about $880,000, driven principally by quarterly reimbursements to municipal partners (about $512,000) and reimbursements to Winnebago, Outagamie and Calumet counties (about $138,000).
"The November payments total was approximately 551,000," Kristen said during the payments review. After the presentation the board voted to approve the payments by voice vote.
On ridership, Kristen said fixed-route boardings were about 45,000 in November (down 6% year-over-year) and about 45,000 in December (up 4% year-over-year), leaving a year-to-date decline of roughly 11% compared with the prior year. Demand-response services showed gains: November about 7,400 passengers (+4%), December about 8,100 (+13%). Kristen said some riders appear to be shifting from fixed-route service to demand-response options.
In the quarterly KPI review, staff reported fixed-route on-time performance targets around 90% but recent monthly numbers of 86%, 87% and 82%; staff attributed December’s drop to construction and weather. Miles between major system failures exceeded the target and complaints per 100,000 trips remained below target.
Staff also reported continued recruitment challenges for drivers. "When we transitioned to less service because of lack of drivers ... we got down to 17 at one point," said Ron Torrance. He said training has raised the current pool to 28 people, though several remain in training and may not complete certification. Because of training capacity constraints, staff temporarily paused new driver recruitment to focus on completing current trainees. The agency has posted two new positions: a part-time recruitment specialist to focus on hiring and an administrative support specialist to help the finance division.
Board members thanked Deb for her years of service; staff said Deb has worked in grants and finance for about 18 years and will retire next week.
The board adjourned by voice vote at the meeting’s close.
