Wausau MetroRide buses. Image courtesy: WAOW TV.
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Bus riders in the Wausau area won’t have to worry about paying fares until at least this spring.
Thursday afternoon the Wausau Transit Commission considered resuming the collection of passenger fares for MetroRide. The bus service stopped collecting fares at the end of March due to COVID-19 concerns. Some of those concerns included drivers and passengers from passing cash, coins, or passes between each other.
At the commission meeting Transit Director Greg Seubert calculated for the commission the amount of money being lost in fare collection with current ridership. He estimated the total was between 14 to 16 thousand dollars. But Seubert explained that loss has been made up for in MetroRide’s budget with federal funding.
“We pay for it just like we’ve paid for it all along. We supplement with CARES funds. That’s certainly a valid purpose and that’s one of the recommended reasons that they awarded CARES funds in the first place.”
Wausau is currently the only transit system in the state not collecting passenger fares. Other systems in the state waited to resume fair collection until installing plastic sneeze guards for bus drivers to have less contact with passengers. But Seubert says even with a sneeze guard there are still risks when collecting fares.
“That requires that you load people through the front door. Which increases the risk for your bus operators. And then we have to process what we collect. So the tickets have to be counted, the cash has to be counted on a daily basis. So that involves my staff. So there is risk in collecting fares.”
Ultimately the commission decided with transmission levels of COVID-19 higher than they were at the beginning of the year, the risks outweighed the marginal financial benefits of resuming fare collection. The commission unanimously voted to suspend fare collection until March 31st of 2021. The commission will reevaluate when to resume collecting passenger fares at their February meeting in 2021.
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