Short version: Transit Plus is Milwaukee County’s ADA paratransit program. A one-way van trip costs $4. What you cannot do is call up and book one — there’s an application, a section only a licensed healthcare provider is allowed to complete, and an in-person assessment before anyone rides. Plan on about a month from the day you mail the form to the day the van shows up.
This page walks through the whole process, including the parts that send applications back. If the appointment is sooner than a month out, or the address is in Waukesha, or it’s a Sunday evening, skip to the gap at the bottom.
What a Transit Plus ride costs
$4.00 each way. Pay with exact cash, a Transit Plus WisGo ID card, or the Umo app — the drivers do not make change, so a $5 bill costs you $5. Fare payment moved to WisGo in January 2026 and the $40 ticket book is no longer sold, though tickets you already own stay good through the end of 2026.
Bringing someone with you? A companion pays $4.00 each way too, so a round trip for two is $16. Riders enrolled in a long-term care program may be charged more — ask before you count on the $4.
For comparison, a private-pay accessible ride around Milwaukee runs roughly $100 to $150 one way. If you qualify for Transit Plus and the timing works, use it. Nothing else in the county is close on price.
Who qualifies — and what they never ask about
Eligibility turns on one thing: whether you can use a regular MCTS bus. Two situations count.
- You can’t independently board, ride, or get off a fixed-route bus.
- A disability-related condition, or a barrier in the environment between you and the stop, makes it impossible to get to or from that stop on your own.
MCTS states these are the only criteria used. Age is not considered. Neither is income, whether you drive, whether there’s a car in the driveway, your diagnosis, or the fact that you use a wheelchair.
That last one surprises people. Using a wheelchair does not by itself qualify you — plenty of wheelchair users board a low-floor bus fine. The question is functional, and it’s about the bus.
There’s a second limit that has nothing to do with eligibility and everything to do with the vehicle. The application packet warns that a mobility device wider than 30 inches or longer than 48 inches — measured two inches above the ground — or a rider and device weighing more than 600 pounds together, may not be able to be accommodated on Transit Plus vans. You can be certified and still own a chair the van cannot take. Here’s how to measure yours, and what ramps and lifts are actually rated for.
Determinations come back in one of three forms — unconditional, conditional or temporary — and only the first is a plain yes. If your letter said conditional, or said no, that carries its own rules, its own trip-by-trip screening and its own appeal window.
The Transit Plus application is where people get stuck
Three things send packets back, and all three are avoidable.
- Part 4 must be completed by a licensed healthcare provider. If you, a family member, or anyone unlicensed fills it in, the application is invalid — not delayed, invalid.
- That form is good for 90 days from the date it’s signed. Don’t have the doctor sign in January for a packet you mail in April.
- Skip any section and the whole thing is returned to you for completion and resubmission. Nothing is scheduled in the meantime.
The application packet is a PDF you download from MCTS, print, and mail — there is no online submission. Send the completed packet to Transit Plus, 1942 N. 17th St., Milwaukee, WI 53205. No assessment appointment is booked until a complete application is physically in their office, so a missing signature costs you a round trip through the mail.
The in-person assessment
The last step is a functional assessment, done in person. Once the complete application arrives, Transit Plus contacts you with available appointment times.
One detail worth planning around: if the applicant needs personal care, toileting assistance, or behavioral supervision, they need to be accompanied by a caregiver or advocate. Arrange that ride and that person before you take the appointment slot.
21 days — and the day-22 rule almost nobody mentions
A determination is made within 21 days of your completing every step, and it arrives by mail.
Here’s the part that rarely gets explained. If Transit Plus hasn’t decided within those 21 days, presumptive service begins on the 22nd day, as though eligibility had been granted. It can be withdrawn if the application is later denied, but you’re not stuck waiting indefinitely with no ride. Silence is not a no. Call 414-343-1700 and ask.
Transit Plus phone numbers, and which one to call
There are two, and people reach for the wrong one.
- Book a ride, cancel one, or ask where yours is: Transdev, 414-817-9860.
- Eligibility, the application, your determination letter: the Transit Plus office, 414-343-1700.
Call the office about a van that hasn’t shown up and you’ll be transferred, on the morning when those are the minutes you don’t have.
Booking a ride once you’re certified
Reservations are taken 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, seven days a week, 365 days a year. A trip can be booked up to seven days ahead, and it has to be on the books by 4:30 PM the day before you travel.
That cutoff is the one that bites. An appointment set weeks ago is easy to plan around. A clinic that calls Thursday afternoon to move you to Friday morning is not, and there’s no same-day queue to join once 4:30 has passed.
Cancel more than two hours before pickup. Later than that and it counts as a late cancellation, because the van is often already on its way.
Your pickup time is a window, not a time
Scheduled for 9:00 AM means the van is running on time anywhere between 9:00 and 9:30. That 30-minute arrival window is how the service is built, not a sign something has gone wrong.
Once it pulls up, the driver waits five minutes. The driver also can’t come inside to find you, or wait at the curb while you settle up at the checkout desk.
For plenty of riders that’s all workable. For someone who needs a few minutes to get to the door with a walker, or whose treatment finishes when it finishes rather than when the schedule says it will, five minutes at the curb is where the plan comes apart.
Same Day exists, but read the fine print
The county runs a separate Transit Plus Same Day pilot, and it survives 2026 in reduced form after the budget nearly cut it. Rides are $10, booked through an app by riders who registered in advance, and limited to urgent medical and work trips — not errands, not a visit, not a funeral.
The detail that catches people: as of March 15, 2026 it starts at 8:00 AM, an hour later than it used to. A 6:00 AM dialysis chair is outside it. So is anything after it stops for the night.
Where Transit Plus stops
Vans run border to border inside Milwaukee County, plus a short list of destinations just outside it. That covers a lot: Froedtert, Aurora St. Luke’s, the Zablocki VA, Mitchell airport, every clinic in the county.
It does not cover Brookfield, Waukesha, Racine, or Kenosha. If the specialist is across a county line, that trip isn’t a Transit Plus trip, whatever your certification says. Waukesha County residents have a different program — RideLine, which does leave the county for medical trips under specific conditions.
Visiting Milwaukee for a few weeks?
If you’re already ADA paratransit certified where you live, Transit Plus honors it. Visitors get up to 21 days of service in a 365-day period, at the same $4 fare, with rides reserved a day ahead. Contact the Transit Plus office before the visit rather than after you arrive.
The month you’re waiting, and the trips it can’t take
Two gaps are left over, and they’re different from each other.
The first is temporary and badly timed. Certification takes roughly a month, and almost nobody starts the paperwork until they suddenly need a ride — which is usually the week a parent comes home from a hospital with three follow-ups on the calendar. If you’re reading this and the need is still theoretical, apply now. Start it a year early. It costs nothing to hold.
The second gap doesn’t close. The 6:00 AM dialysis chair, before Same Day opens. The Saturday funeral, which is neither a medical trip nor a work trip. The appointment in Brookfield, across the county line. The pickup that has to be an actual time rather than the front edge of a 30-minute window.
That’s where a private-pay ride earns its fare, and we’ll say plainly that it costs more. BriteLift arranges accessible rides across Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth counties. You give us the door, the mobility device and the appointment time, and we match the trip to a wheelchair-accessible vehicle that fits it. The rider stays in their own chair, and the van isn’t shared.
Apply for Transit Plus and use it for everything it covers. Call 414-716-1212 for the trips it can’t take.
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Where these details come from
- MCTS Transit Plus — program, fares, booking hours and service area
- Milwaukee County transportation programs for older adults — including OATS for residents 60+
- Paying with WisGo and the Umo app, and when your old tickets expire
- Will your wheelchair fit in the van? Size and weight limits explained
- Denied, or given conditional eligibility? What the letter means and how to appeal
- All four Milwaukee wheelchair transportation options compared
- Senior transportation in Milwaukee
Fares, hours and booking windows are set by Milwaukee County and do change — older Transit Plus rider guides still in circulation list a 5:00 PM reservation line and a 14-day booking window, both since superseded. Confirm anything you’re relying on with Transit Plus at 414-343-1700 before you build a plan around it.