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The elderly, the Amish and students - those without motorized personal transportation - will be affected. The heavily subsidized route was daily when Greyhound Lines abandoned it four years ago. Jefferson picked it up, and its most recent schedule featured three runs weekly from Madison to La Crosse and the Twin Cities and three on alternating days from La Crosse to Madison, stopping in 10 villages and small cities along the way, including Spring Green, Richland Center and Westby.
The plans are not final, Jefferson officials said last week, but they added that the company cannot afford to lose more money on the route, which has never earned the company any money, said Jefferson vice president Bonnie Buchanon.
Ruth Rupp, the Westby depot manager - which means she sells tickets at her small business, Logan Mill Lodge - said she and others learned of the plans just as they were hatching their own plan to increase ridership so the bus could continue.
Last week, on a Friday morning, Rupp was just getting ready to personally deliver some bus tickets to a few regulars.
“There isn’t any need to mess with the schedule because they’ve already made their decision,” Rupp said. “They were going to wait and give 30 days notice, but when they heard we were going to work on increasing the ridership, they decided to make the announcement.”
Rupp said the next attempt to keep some public transportation flowing from Vernon County to La Crosse will continue through the Vernon County Transportation Committee.
“That committee has been trying to get a shuttle bus from Viroqua to La Crosse,” Rupp said. “Now we’ll see if they can expedite the process.
“We’ve already started discussing some kind of mini-bus or large van from Readstown into La Crosse or up to Tomah or both,” she said.
Rupp said the bus line wants her to continue selling tickets but only to buses that will leave from Tomah and La Crosse and further down the route. Richland Center may consider a plan to have a bus run to Madison to replace the closed Jefferson line, she said.
“A lot of my customers also go to Dubuque and catch the bus to head south,” she said.
She said when Jefferson cut the route to three days a week in one direction, “it killed it. It used to be every day both directions.” Among those disenfranchised by that change were some Amish travelers who needed to catch a bus one day earlier than the changed schedule allowed to make connections with transportation out east.
“Most days when it comes through there are 15 people on, and they needed 25 to break even,” Rupp said.
“It is going to be hard on the elderly. They really hurt the worst because they go visit their children who have moved to and live and work in the Twin Cities or in Madison or Milwaukee or Chicago. They want to go visit, but they don’t want to drive, and this provided a safe way to get to where their children can pick them up,” she said.
Buchanon said the bus line only “reluctantly” picked up the route after Greyhound’s exit from the line in 2004.
“We agreed to give it a try, and we have tried to do so many things (with the route).
“The biggest problem is that it just underperforms. It is a big loser for us. We operate with federal assistance but it only covers 50 percent of our losses. I’ve talked with the (Wisconsin) Department of Transportation, and I had turned in a grant request for next year saying we would like to drop the route from La Crosse through Westby, suggesting instead that we will go from La Crosse into Tomah and then connect with Greyhound. For the people from La Crosse, it will be a faster trip, too,” she said.
She also discussed with DOT the possibility of shared-ride transit arrangements for Westby and Viroqua, providing transportation for those connecting trips to Tomah and La Crosse.
“I know the DOT is very concerned about service to those rural communities,” she said, “and we are, too. We want to try to work with the folks who will be affected.”
She said the bus line is waiting to hear from the DOT before it will form a plan for closing, though depot agents like Rupp have been notified that the route will probably end Jan. 1.
DOT transit official John Alley said Monday the grant applications were not finalized, but “we are disappointed at the loss of service.” The current grant runs out Jan. 1. Plans for shared-ride transit should be eligible for subsidy also, he said.
