Ad hoc transit committee reviews shared ride data, sets plan to hear from taxi providers

City finance director Wendi Bixby walked the city’s ad hoc transportation committee through 10 years of financial data on Rhinelander’s former subsidized shared ride taxi program June 25, providing the cost history members had requested at their previous meeting as they weigh whether to recommend reviving some form of public transit service.
The presentation came after the committee’s May 28 meeting, where members reviewed a detailed cost projection for a county-operated fixed-route bus through the city and discussed who else should be brought into the process.
Shared ride program’s cost history
Bixby told the committee she had compiled annual statistics from 2015 through 2024 on passenger trips, billed driver hours, contract rates and the “local share” — the gap between program costs and what the city received in fares and state and federal funding.
That local share reached $75,449 in 2024, the year the Common Council voted to discontinue the program effective Jan. 1, 2025, Bixby said. She said the city avoided a local share in 2021 through 2023 largely because federal COVID-relief funding through the American Rescue Plan Act covered costs that would otherwise have been billed to the city.

“So, in 2021 and ‘22 and ‘23 there was no local share, because it was being covered by the [ARPA] funds, the extra funding that they had,” Bixby explained.
Bixby and committee members spent much of the meeting trying to account for a steep decline in ridership — passenger trips fell from roughly 86,000 in 2016 to about half that in the years before the program ended — even as the city raised fares by $1.25 across all levels in January 2023 and contract costs continued to climb.
Members and Bixby offered several possible explanations, including the arrival of a second cab company in the local market around 2021, the addition of a $7 agency fare for social-service-arranged rides starting in July 2021, and a timing mismatch caused by prepaid “punch cards” that could be purchased in one year but used the next. Bixby also noted the city’s program and the Oneida/Vilas County transit system known as Northwoods Transit Connections were found by the state not to be duplicative services because they used different vehicle types, though she said the county’s later expansion likely drew some riders away.
Bixby also detailed the state-mandated bidding process the city must follow to operate a subsidized program, including independent scoring by a committee of three city officials. She said the city’s most recent request for proposals, in 2020, was scored by herself, the mayor (Chris Frederickson) and the city administrator (Zach Vruwink).
Committee plans to hear from current and former providers
With the cost data in hand, committee members turned to whether and how to recommend the city re-enter the subsidized transit space. Committee member Gerald Anderson cautioned against making changes without first hearing from the city’s current private taxi operator, saying, “I guess the only [voice] we haven’t really heard from is the actual taxi company.”
The committee agreed to invite both Grant Bornbach — who operates Advanced Medical LLC, a Rhinelander-based company providing both medical transport and taxi service — and Running Inc. of Viroqua, the city’s former shared ride contractor, to share their perspectives before the committee makes a recommendation to the council. Bornbach is to be invited to the July meeting and representatives from Running Inc to the August session.