March updates

The Wisconsin Transit Riders Alliance annual spring meeting, 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 14 (in person and online), will include a free online program, Advocating for Seamless Intercity Public Transportation in Wisconsin, with guests State Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner; Chris Ott, President of Wisconsin Association of Rail Passengers; and Gary Goyke, All Aboard Wisconsin. How can we advocate for better multimodal connections to make travel in Wisconsin using public transportation better? Case in point – to attend the meeting in Madison using public transportation, someone from La Crosse would need to spend three days traveling there and back because of the pitiful schedules. WTRA is our “parent” organization and connects us to the state and region through its associations with other organizations. Please consider attending both the public program and the following WTRA business meeting. You are a member of WTRA if you consider yourself a member of LATA. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/WTRA2026 or learn more here: https://witransitriders.org/events/Annual-meeting.

The ADA MTU advisory committee is meeting on Tuesday, March 10 at 5:30 p.m. online. This meeting is open to the public. Access by zoom here: https://cityoflacrosse-org.zoom.us/j/86319223115?pwd=VmliZVpWK29qTW01bG5FNG9QeXBNUT09 Meeting ID: 863 1922 3115 Passcode: 811321

The advisory Committee on Transit and Active Transportation of the La Crosse Area Planning Committee will meet on Tuesday, March 12 at 3:30 p.m. The meetings are open to the public. Learn more at https://www.lacrossecounty.org/metropolitan-planning-organization/committees/committee-on-transit-and-active-transportation

Our LATA leaders next meeting will be Tuesday, March 17 at 6:30 p.m. Going forward, we will meet on third Tuesdays. If you are interested in joining us, email or call (608-315-2693). We'll discuss Earth Month activities, continuing SMRT advocacy, and planning for Week Without Driving among other issues.

TENTATIVE: We will do another SMRT outreach and education ride to Viroqua on Friday, March 20. We take the Yellow Route 2 from La Crosse and get to Viroqua at about 11 a.m. We'll spread out with SMRT info materials and talk to people about how they can support the SMRT bus. If you would like to participate, please email or call us (knowing how many will go helps us know how many pieces of lit to print (if you'd like to donate for printing costs, let us know!))

We are working on SMRT info for Prairie du Chien and Tomah routes. If you are a regular rider on either of these routes, please email or call us – we want to make sure info is clear about exactly where to stand to catch those buses.

LATA leader Liz Fryseth has been working to cultivate transit advocates at State Road and Hintgen Schools! She's met with classes about taking public transit and some students have written letters advocating for stops closer to their school.  If you would like to help talk to school students about using the bus,or if you are a teacher who would like to set up a talk, please reply to this email.

We will have some opportunities to table and do outreach during Earth Month activities in April. For example, can you spend an hour or so tabling for LATA at the Earth Fair on Sunday, April 26 between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.? If yes, please sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/42626-latavol (one or two people per shift).

SMRT UPDATE: We still have not heard of any opportunities for SMRT riders to be involved with planning for beyond 2026. For now, the best advice is to talk with all current, past, and potential funders – county board members, city or town councils, schools, employers, businesses – and ask them to help fund this system. We may put together a program to collect ideas and input if there are not other options. Stay tuned!

MTU UPDATE: The City of La Crosse is updating its website soon which means the MTU site will also be updated. We have not heard of opportunities for riders to provide input on planned changes but will request this. For the first time in forever, all the MTU buses are now operating within their official “service lives.” The Transit Center is now open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. If you would like to request a stop at a location near you OR a shelter OR just plain old seating, please use the MTU “Request a Stop” form at https://tinyurl.com/LaCrosseMTU-Ask4Stop