Federal grant for new transit center in Appleton supports bus connection between Fox Cities

The city of Appleton plans to replace its existing public transit center with a new building that includes space for future affordable housing.

The center is the hub for a bus service connecting nine municipalities in the Fox Cities.

Valley Transit, a bus and public transportation service operated by the city of Appleton, will receive the $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, or RAISE, program. The program is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The existing transit center will be torn down and replaced with a new building that includes public restrooms, covered outdoor waiting areas and first-floor indoor waiting areas, as well as a police dispatch security substation.

The new building will include space for affordable housing units to be built above the transit center in the future.

The Appleton project is one of 148 projects nationally to win RAISE funding in June. The only other project in Wisconsin to receive funding this round is a $1 million grant to the city of Waukesha funding the planning and design of two bicycle and pedestrian structures over U.S. Highway 18 and State Trunk Highway 59.

“These are projects that are going to improve everyday life and the cost of living in communities across the country,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a June 25 press call announcing the grant awards.

As of May, Wisconsin had received $6.9 billion in federal investments for infrastructure and clean energy through the administration’s “Investing in America” policies, according to the White House.

Appleton Mayor Mayor Jake Woodford said the city is also pledging $1.8 million of its federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars toward the affordable housing portion of project. The number of units has yet to be determined.

Valley Transit General Manager Ron McDonald said the $25 million RAISE funding will be exclusively used for the transit portion of the project. He said the city’s existing transit center has outlived its useful life.

“We’re not going to be asking the local taxpayers for additional funding for this project,” he said. “It’s going to be paid for through this grant.”

Valley Transit provides bus service to nine municipalities from Neenah to Kaukauna.

“Our service area is probably about 117 square miles,” McDonald said. “We operate in all three counties within the Fox Cities: Outagamie, Winnebago and Calumet counties. We just need to get people where they want to go throughout the Fox Cities and we take that seriously.”

Without the RAISE funds, Woodford said officials would’ve had to completely rethink and rescale the project.

“The project, as conceived, would not be possible without these funds,” he said. “The fiscal realities that face the city of Appleton, and all of our neighboring communities, makes it such that we would not be able to afford doing this project without the support of the federal government.”

But getting that support took more time than local officials initially thought. They applied for a previous round of RAISE funding, but were not successful. 

This time, Woodford and McDonald went to Washington D.C. to meet with Wisconsin’s federal lawmakers to lobby for the project.

Woodford said the city and Valley Transit also received support for the project from then-U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Baldwin released a statement in June announcing the RAISE funding for the Appleton project, saying she advocated to Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to fund the project.

“I fought hard to bring home this funding to rebuild our outdated infrastructure, spur economic growth, and expand affordable housing options for working families,” Baldwin said. “The new Transit Center will help ensure everyone can get where they need to go safely, make public transportation more convenient, and put housing within reach for more Wisconsinites.”

In July, Baldwin also announced Valley Transit will receive an additional $12 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for a different project that would renovate the transit system’s administration, maintenance and bus storage facility.

On the Transit Center reconstruction, Woodford said there is an “immense need” for affordable housing in Appleton, so the city will move as quickly as it can to review proposals from potential developers. 

He said there is work to do before the city can break ground on the project.

“As I understand it, the timeline to obligate the funds runs out to 2028, but we are not going to be standing still,” Woodford said. “We were already actively underway in identifying a developer and getting this project off the ground.”