The Fox Cities Transit Commission met 04/26/2022. One of the items they discussed was the “Tripper” routes. I didn’t know what “Trippers” were, but apparently, they’re special routes that Valley Transit runs during the school year that students can ride for free. The Appleton Area School District covers the local share of the costs for these routes. These routes run in two areas—on the north side of town by North High School and Fox Valley Lutheran High School and on the south side of town by Madison Middle School.
One of the commission members had requested this item be put on the agenda because they had been told that only two passengers on a particular tripper route. Valley Transit General Manager told the commission that that could very well be the case on some days.
He went on to explain that, the Appleton Area School District paid for the local cost of providing the tripper routes. The routes only took 30 minutes, sometimes less, to complete; however, when Valley Transit brings in a driver to work, they are required by labor contract, to pay a minimum of two hours. So, once the drivers finished the tripper routes, Valley Transit has them provide extra service on another route during a peak period of time. He mentioned that they put out an extra bus in the Menasha and Neenah area.
Because they run the tripper service, AASD is covering the local cost for the buses for that two hour timeframe. If they didn’t run the trippers, Valley Transit would still have to put out additional buses during peak hours, but then the local municipalities would be covering the cost of the drivers instead of AASD. Because of that, General Manager McDonald recommended that they continue to operate the tripper services and continue to communicate with the schools to improve ridership.
The commission member who had asked for the item to be put on the agenda said that his concern behind bringing it up was that it sounded like for the whole school year the Appleton North tripper had very few riders. He wondered about trying to coordinate school dismissal times with Valley Transit. It was okay to run trippers, but he would prefer to see passengers on them if they were going to run them.
General Manager McDonald agreed [it seemed to me both with the desire for more passengers on the trippers and for the schools to coordinate their dismissal times with bus times]. A Valley Transit staff member had been in communication with AASD Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes throughout the last school year. Mr. Hartjes had been appointed as the new school superintendent so Valley Transit was anticipating that communication would be much better as they moved forward.
Schools do not coordinate their bells with the transit schedule, and, in fact, AASD changed their bells right before the school year started, and Valley Transit hadn’t been able to react to that. General Manager McDonald said that AASD was looking at changing their times again next year and he was hopeful that Valley Transit could have some conversations with them prior to that.
He also noted that Valley Transit does provide marketing materials to the schools and information that they put out in their news letters to the students and parents to help them be informed about the transit options that are available.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=935848&GUID=EB1005FA-557B-4B42-A432-58BDE489D35F
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