Free and Battery-Powered: The Hop in Milwaukee

The reason that there are no wires at the two turns at kilbourne is because the distance to anchor points for the electrified wire is too great to prevent sagging and bouncing on windy days….

Damn I gotta visit my hometown. Awww I miss the city buses there. Hey Milwaukee I miss you.

Visited Chicago and took the Hiawatha to Milwaukee for a day. Used this to get around downtown during my duration there. I feel like it's a good start , and it was amazing to see a free public transit service in a very cute and quaint large city with a humble vibe. Although I have visited family in Chicago as a kid and adult , that was my first time visiting Milwaukee and I loved it! I hope they expand on this street car service and even maybe add light rail in the future . It's a really cool city with nice people and the food was amazing too. Nice to see you there enjoying the architecture. One of my favorite parts !

I love MKE, totally underrated city. I was eager to sample the Hop while I was in town but whenever I wanted to go somewhere, it never suited my needs. Had I known it was free, I would've taken a "joy ride". Most of my trips were served by the 30 bus which had fairly frequent service and I paid with the Umo App. I'm also glad you showed off City Hall, certainly great architecture in Brew City!

This is awesome! Currently am an operator for the hop and wanted to see if there any videos for it and not only is there, you happened to get on board the run I was operating!

Lovely video. Even though it's currently rather short, the Hop is incredibly helpful for my commute home from work in Third Ward. Every time my mom visits, whether or not it's helpful we ride anyway because she really enjoys it. I love the Hop!

Great to see you in my home town! I have somewhat mixed feelings about the Hop. I like the concept and support expanding it to be useful, but as you point out in its current state, its not all that useful. It does link some of the highest density residential areas near Burns Commons with a lot of jobs in the CBD, but that's about it. Aside from hitting the intermodal station, it misses all of the other things that would draw ridership. It doesn't have access to any of our sports venues and misses many of the performing arts and convention areas as well. It doesn't get to the airport either. All that being said, I enjoy the service as someone who works right next to its route. My boss and I were fortunate to be able to ride on one of the first "revenue" service cars on the route its first day. We were looking out the window and saw it heading toward us from the 3rd ward and ran downstairs. I just hope we can continue to expand it so it can be more useful in the future. That takes money though and it was a fight to get just this far with it. Hope to see you in MKE again!

Great to see such bright, beautiful cars unmarred by the billboard type wraps we see in so many other cities. A much clearer view for us riders on cloudy days.

As an employee of San Diego Metropolitan transit system I would be honored for you to come out one day and have a tour of our system

Cool to see Milwaukee trying to create an electric powered rail system! I’m a big fan of the METRO Rail in the Twin Cities, so it’s cool to see something like this happening in Milwaukee.

Lived in Milwaukee and Shorewood in the 50's. Very decent trolleybus network (I rode the #15 line all the time) and streetcars lasted until 3/58 with the very long #10 line the last. Ran down Wells St., over the valley on viaduct and then split, one part serving the ball park and W. Allis to the south and the other straight out west. Too bad Milwaukee got out of the electric habit. The streetcar is a start but much more is needed. Milwaukee was also very safe in the 50's, not so much today so I hear though I haven't been back except once in many many years.

I'm glad you've enjoyed riding on The Hop. Great streetcar to hop from one place to another. I have plans returning to Milwaukee once the L-Line becomes operational, and I'm definitely gonna hop in it.

It should be expanded. Milwaukee used to have an amazing streetcar, and it should again.

Enjoyed this what I refer to as ,a travel blog for one very simple reason.There wasn't any distracting crap music to have to tolerate.Now I appreciate that sometimes AI generates a track to accompany the vlog but this youngster doesn't have that.

Thanks for this video. I live in Milwaukee but never saw this when I was downtown. I saw the tracks for it only. 😃

damn, that's a cute streetcar. I like how seamless it looks when it's disconnected from the Catenary wire, almost looks like it's floating. I have never heard of Brookeville but they're apparently from my home state of PA. Also 'The Hop' is an adorable name for streetcar line, omg. Edit: did a bit more research and it turns out that quite a few of these have been deployed in US cities in the 2010's! Really liking the resurgence of streetcar lines in the past 10 years. These Battery / Catenary powered units offer a flexibility that really shows why they've caught on in popularity

WELOCOME TO MY CITY🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉THE SUMMER IS EVEN BETTER

Love Milwaukee! Worked up there for about 6 months.

Milwaukee is my hometown. It’s a great city. It had socialist mayors for about fifty years, and thus it’s a city with lots of parks and beautiful boulevards. More recently, it’s mayors have had a lot of vision. It’s also a physically beautiful city right on the lake. Glad you had a nice visit!

I rode the Hop all over! It's really great. :-)