Irregularities surround West Palm’s transit choice
By Anne Geggis | Stet News
October 19, 2026 at 1:00 PM EDT
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
West Palm Beach’s biggest investment in public transit, touted as key to convincing the public to give up their cars downtown, was made without City Commission approval and little public debate.
Unlike what was originally called for, the contract doesn’t allow the city to cancel it without citing a reason. City codes do not require the commission to consider the contract, but other public agencies vote on contracts like this, especially when millions of dollars are involved.
This new ride promises to serve many more, but last month’s arrival of Tidewater Transit as the city’s new vendor turned on several irregularities — including the wrong vendor being told they won the contract, which is worth about $36 million over five years.
Called West Palm Move, the service uses an all-electric fleet touted by the city as a key tool to reduce parking requirements for developers. It plans continuously running fixed routes downtown and Uber-style, on-demand service, all the while responding to real-time traffic conditions.
While it charges riders a nominal fee, the service is heavily subsidized by the city.
The downtown’s salvation from chronically congested roadways is at stake, according to city administrators and planners.
“We have learned that there’s 40,000 people a day that go … through this corridor” near the Palm Beach County Convention Center, said Bernard Zyscovich, a Miami architect whose team crafted the proposed downtown master plan update.
“If we could get them out of their cars and develop a transit connection, we could end up decongesting a lot of the city,” he told a group discussing downtown’s future this year.
Debatable stops along the way include:
Still, Jessica Keller, parking and mobility administrator for the city, predicts that users of the orange-red minibuses and Volkswagen ID.Buzz minivans are going to be more impressed with West Palm Move’s service than the iconic transit systems in cities where many West Palm Beach residents hail from.
“With the feeling of safety, cleanliness and customer service, it’s going to exceed anything in New York,” she said.
Baked into the contract, Tidewater has to meet performance metrics or face a financial penalty, Keller said.
The company is required to keep wait times for the fixed-route service to less than 10 minutes; for the on-demand services, less than 15 minutes.
“So there’s a lot of accountability built in,” Keller said.
The city can dock Tidewater’s pay if they don’t meet those wait times but can’t easily fire them.
Easing the bottleneck
Hemmed in by drawbridges on the east side and train crossings on the west, relieving traffic in West Palm Beach has long been a priority. And that priority has become more urgent in recent years as the downtown has experienced unprecedented growth. Also, the city has been advancing plans that increase potential development downtown while easing parking requirements.
The effect on traffic is among the chief complaints of downtown residents spurred to organize for what they say is preserving their quality of life.
Circuit Transit started in West Palm Beach in 2014 as an ad-supported seasonal shuttle that passengers used for free, on demand, enabling them to leave their cars in the garage, for example, and get to lunch across town without breaking a sweat or getting soaked.
Encouraged by the popularity of the service — coinciding with the pandemic boom that brought more people downtown — a coalition of public and private partners formed in 2023 to get transportation alternatives moving faster.
“People gravitate to our city, drawn by a thriving job market and exceptional quality of life,” said Mayor Keith James at the 2023 kickoff for a partnership that included an executive from the Related Cos.
READ MORE: West Palm Beach launches $1 electric car service amid rising traffic congestion
“However, with this growth comes a pressing need to address our transportation challenges and ensure that our city remains accessible, efficient and convenient.”
Gopal Rajegowda, then an executive vice president at Related, echoed the sentiment at the same event: “More people want to come here to live here, play here, and work here, and we’re seeing that firsthand from all the developments we’re developing in downtown West Palm.
“And with that, we need to continue to think about … how we take cars off the road in order to allow those who rely on the car to move freely throughout the downtown.”
The Downtown Development Authority engaged Circuit to expand by continuously running fixed routes and on-demand service for limited city areas and the town of Palm Beach. In April 2025, however, the city asked for companies to propose how they would expand the city offerings to all areas east of Interstate 95 — an area with four times as many people as the area that Circuit was serving.
The operator of this contract would be paid through a combination of developer contributions, mobility fees, Community Redevelopment Agency revenue, parking fees and passenger fares.
A ride on a fixed-route bus costs passengers $1 and an on-demand ride is $2, with the city kicking in the rest, making the service heavily dependent on the subsidy.
The first selection committee
Generally, the city’s purchases are not required to come before the City Commission unless state law requires it or it involves a new City Hall or some other building construction. So the selection goes to a committee that holds meetings rarely attended by members of the public.
Three companies remained in the running for the transit bid after the first committee considered five companies’ written proposals. Circuit and Tidewater emerged as the leading contenders and Keolis, a Paris-based transit provider, also in the running.
That committee was composed of Keller; Veronica Altuve, a city traffic engineer; Teneka James, executive director of the DDA; Christopher Roog, executive director of the CRA; and Matthew Williams, fleet manager of the city’s Support Services Department.
In these pitches, Circuit cited its long history of operating in West Palm Beach as well as contracts in eight states and, in Florida, operations in Boca Raton, Hollywood and Coconut Grove.
Tidewater’s proposal included a partner that made Jacksonville the first city to have a fully driverless public transportation system. Tidewater’s parent company, Via Transportation Inc., is a publicly traded company that operates globally and has been called the largest microtransit provider in the country.
Irregular scoring
The first selection committee met July 16, 2025, to watch the three companies make presentations and, even before the erroneous award notification, the scorecards filled out that day showed some curious results.
Three out of five committee members — the DDA executive director, the CRA executive director and the fleet manager — gave better overall scores to Circuit. Keller and traffic engineer Altuve ranked Tidewater superior at margins great enough to overcome the majority’s higher marks for Circuit. Also, even though the scoring was at an in-person event, Keller’s scoresheet showed different dates, “July 12, 2025” and “8/12/2026.”
Kathleen Joy, city spokeswoman, chalked up the erroneous dates to an inadvertent mistake.
On July 21, 2025, Circuit was told they won the bid, but then, four days after that, the company got a letter saying the offer was being rescinded due to a “scrivener’s error.” The city did not specify to Circuit what the error was and when asked by Stet News why the rebid was ordered, Joy said only that “it was in the best interests of the city.”
The letter to Circuit does go on to explain that its score amounted to a second-place ranking. The scoresheet was attached, showing Circuit’s overall score was one point below Tidewater’s.
When the rebid was ordered, only one selection committee member was retained for the second round: Altuve.
Altuve, who left her city job in March and now works for the city of Hollywood, could not be reached for comment.
Joy said the city intended to have a completely new committee for the rebid but couldn’t because expertise in transit matters is limited. She did not say why the city wanted a new committee for the rebid.
2nd committee’s decision more decisive
A second committee was convened in October 2025 with Altuve joined by Ira Brewster, strategic planning manager at Palm Tran; Alex Hansen, comprehensive planner in the Development Services Department; Jade Greene, CRA deputy director; and Kevin Volbrecht, director of the city’s Engineering Services.
This time, the scoring showed a more decisive No. 1 ranking for Tidewater — by an 85-point margin. That result, however, spurred a formal protest before the commission on Jan. 20 from Alex Esposito, Circuit’s co-founder and CEO, who is also a city resident.
The second committee had no opportunity to hear the companies’ presentations or allow the presenters to correct wrong information, he said.
‘Improper external factors’ alleged
“Instead of increasing clarity for a partially new committee, the one mechanism that had previously ensured clarity was removed,” Esposito said. “Not only were presentations removed, vendors were not allowed to speak during the evaluation meeting, so factual errors made on the record couldn’t be corrected.”
He offered an example.
“An evaluator stated that the recommended vendor (Tidewater) offered the best value of all three proposals … the most hours, frequency and coverage,” Esposito told the City Commission. “That statement was accepted by other evaluators. Instead, this is factually wrong and misleading.
“The transcript shows the competitor was credited with 66,800 hours for the first year. Our proposal explicitly listed 83,515 hours. That’s about 25% more service hours for less money. That’s not a minor issue.”
Written materials protesting the bid award also say that Altuve’s scoring of Circuit and Tidewater indicated a bias in the proceedings.
“She reduced Circuit’s score to 59 (from 80) while awarding Via (Tidewater) a perfect 100 (from 90) — a drastic and unsupportable shift in a procurement where the requirement changed nominally,” an attorney for Circuit wrote to the city.
“No reasonable or documented basis could support such a change in scoring. … The only plausible inference is that Altuve’s evaluation was influenced by improper external factors, personal favoritism, or bias, rather than an objective assessment of the proposal materials as required by the RFP (request for proposals) criteria.”
At the protest, commissioners expressed some discomfort with other aspects of securing this service, such as why the DDA wasn’t involved in the second selection committee and why Tidewater was starting off with only one short, fixed route.
“Is there an option for us to be the selection committee and start over, so that we’re able to see and hear things from the beginning?” asked Commissioner Christy Fox, who represents downtown.
The commission has been the final arbiter in major service contracts in the past, including controversial decisions to select the operators of the Sunset Lounge and a downtown security service.
None of Fox’s fellow commissioners were on board with making the selection themselves, however, and that would not follow the procedure when bid protests occur, the city attorney told the commission.
West Palm Beach’s biggest investment in public transit, touted as key to convincing the public to give up their cars downtown, was made without City Commission approval and little public debate.
Unlike what was originally called for, the contract doesn’t allow the city to cancel it without citing a reason. City codes do not require the commission to consider the contract, but other public agencies vote on contracts like this, especially when millions of dollars are involved.
This new ride promises to serve many more, but last month’s arrival of Tidewater Transit as the city’s new vendor turned on several irregularities — including the wrong vendor being told they won the contract, which is worth about $36 million over five years.
Called West Palm Move, the service uses an all-electric fleet touted by the city as a key tool to reduce parking requirements for developers. It plans continuously running fixed routes downtown and Uber-style, on-demand service, all the while responding to real-time traffic conditions.
While it charges riders a nominal fee, the service is heavily subsidized by the city.
The downtown’s salvation from chronically congested roadways is at stake, according to city administrators and planners.
“We have learned that there’s 40,000 people a day that go … through this corridor” near the Palm Beach County Convention Center, said Bernard Zyscovich, a Miami architect whose team crafted the proposed downtown master plan update.
“If we could get them out of their cars and develop a transit connection, we could end up decongesting a lot of the city,” he told a group discussing downtown’s future this year.
Debatable stops along the way include:
- The city dumped its longtime transportation partner Circuit Transit, after mistakenly telling the company the contract was theirs.
- A new request for bids was ordered because of an unspecified “scrivener’s error” in the first bid.
- A second, mostly new set of committee members were convened, but they did not see presentations from the bidders, as the first committee did, before they ranked the bids.
- The only person who served on both committees downgraded her ranking of Circuit by 21 points in the second round and gave the ultimate contract winner, Tidewater, 10 more points — a perfect score.
- Representatives from the Downtown Development Authority, which oversees public services in the busiest part of the city, were not included in the second selection committee.
- Because the second committee didn’t see the bidders’ presentations and the losing bidder challenged the result, the City Commission sent the bid back to the committee a third time, yielding the same winner.
- The least-expensive proposal was not chosen: Circuit’s cost came in at $1.3 million less over the life of the five-year contract than Tidewater’s.
- It’s unclear what accounts for the difference in prices because the city redacted what appears to be Tidewater’s price breakdown from its proposal. Circuit’s breakdown of price is not redacted.
Still, Jessica Keller, parking and mobility administrator for the city, predicts that users of the orange-red minibuses and Volkswagen ID.Buzz minivans are going to be more impressed with West Palm Move’s service than the iconic transit systems in cities where many West Palm Beach residents hail from.
“With the feeling of safety, cleanliness and customer service, it’s going to exceed anything in New York,” she said.
Baked into the contract, Tidewater has to meet performance metrics or face a financial penalty, Keller said.
The company is required to keep wait times for the fixed-route service to less than 10 minutes; for the on-demand services, less than 15 minutes.
“So there’s a lot of accountability built in,” Keller said.
The city can dock Tidewater’s pay if they don’t meet those wait times but can’t easily fire them.
Easing the bottleneck
Hemmed in by drawbridges on the east side and train crossings on the west, relieving traffic in West Palm Beach has long been a priority. And that priority has become more urgent in recent years as the downtown has experienced unprecedented growth. Also, the city has been advancing plans that increase potential development downtown while easing parking requirements.
The effect on traffic is among the chief complaints of downtown residents spurred to organize for what they say is preserving their quality of life.
Circuit Transit started in West Palm Beach in 2014 as an ad-supported seasonal shuttle that passengers used for free, on demand, enabling them to leave their cars in the garage, for example, and get to lunch across town without breaking a sweat or getting soaked.
Encouraged by the popularity of the service — coinciding with the pandemic boom that brought more people downtown — a coalition of public and private partners formed in 2023 to get transportation alternatives moving faster.
“People gravitate to our city, drawn by a thriving job market and exceptional quality of life,” said Mayor Keith James at the 2023 kickoff for a partnership that included an executive from the Related Cos.
READ MORE: West Palm Beach launches $1 electric car service amid rising traffic congestion
“However, with this growth comes a pressing need to address our transportation challenges and ensure that our city remains accessible, efficient and convenient.”
Gopal Rajegowda, then an executive vice president at Related, echoed the sentiment at the same event: “More people want to come here to live here, play here, and work here, and we’re seeing that firsthand from all the developments we’re developing in downtown West Palm.
“And with that, we need to continue to think about … how we take cars off the road in order to allow those who rely on the car to move freely throughout the downtown.”
The Downtown Development Authority engaged Circuit to expand by continuously running fixed routes and on-demand service for limited city areas and the town of Palm Beach. In April 2025, however, the city asked for companies to propose how they would expand the city offerings to all areas east of Interstate 95 — an area with four times as many people as the area that Circuit was serving.
The operator of this contract would be paid through a combination of developer contributions, mobility fees, Community Redevelopment Agency revenue, parking fees and passenger fares.
A ride on a fixed-route bus costs passengers $1 and an on-demand ride is $2, with the city kicking in the rest, making the service heavily dependent on the subsidy.
The first selection committee
Generally, the city’s purchases are not required to come before the City Commission unless state law requires it or it involves a new City Hall or some other building construction. So the selection goes to a committee that holds meetings rarely attended by members of the public.
Three companies remained in the running for the transit bid after the first committee considered five companies’ written proposals. Circuit and Tidewater emerged as the leading contenders and Keolis, a Paris-based transit provider, also in the running.
That committee was composed of Keller; Veronica Altuve, a city traffic engineer; Teneka James, executive director of the DDA; Christopher Roog, executive director of the CRA; and Matthew Williams, fleet manager of the city’s Support Services Department.
In these pitches, Circuit cited its long history of operating in West Palm Beach as well as contracts in eight states and, in Florida, operations in Boca Raton, Hollywood and Coconut Grove.
Tidewater’s proposal included a partner that made Jacksonville the first city to have a fully driverless public transportation system. Tidewater’s parent company, Via Transportation Inc., is a publicly traded company that operates globally and has been called the largest microtransit provider in the country.
Irregular scoring
The first selection committee met July 16, 2025, to watch the three companies make presentations and, even before the erroneous award notification, the scorecards filled out that day showed some curious results.
Three out of five committee members — the DDA executive director, the CRA executive director and the fleet manager — gave better overall scores to Circuit. Keller and traffic engineer Altuve ranked Tidewater superior at margins great enough to overcome the majority’s higher marks for Circuit. Also, even though the scoring was at an in-person event, Keller’s scoresheet showed different dates, “July 12, 2025” and “8/12/2026.”
Kathleen Joy, city spokeswoman, chalked up the erroneous dates to an inadvertent mistake.
On July 21, 2025, Circuit was told they won the bid, but then, four days after that, the company got a letter saying the offer was being rescinded due to a “scrivener’s error.” The city did not specify to Circuit what the error was and when asked by Stet News why the rebid was ordered, Joy said only that “it was in the best interests of the city.”
The letter to Circuit does go on to explain that its score amounted to a second-place ranking. The scoresheet was attached, showing Circuit’s overall score was one point below Tidewater’s.
When the rebid was ordered, only one selection committee member was retained for the second round: Altuve.
Altuve, who left her city job in March and now works for the city of Hollywood, could not be reached for comment.
Joy said the city intended to have a completely new committee for the rebid but couldn’t because expertise in transit matters is limited. She did not say why the city wanted a new committee for the rebid.
2nd committee’s decision more decisive
A second committee was convened in October 2025 with Altuve joined by Ira Brewster, strategic planning manager at Palm Tran; Alex Hansen, comprehensive planner in the Development Services Department; Jade Greene, CRA deputy director; and Kevin Volbrecht, director of the city’s Engineering Services.
This time, the scoring showed a more decisive No. 1 ranking for Tidewater — by an 85-point margin. That result, however, spurred a formal protest before the commission on Jan. 20 from Alex Esposito, Circuit’s co-founder and CEO, who is also a city resident.
The second committee had no opportunity to hear the companies’ presentations or allow the presenters to correct wrong information, he said.
‘Improper external factors’ alleged
“Instead of increasing clarity for a partially new committee, the one mechanism that had previously ensured clarity was removed,” Esposito said. “Not only were presentations removed, vendors were not allowed to speak during the evaluation meeting, so factual errors made on the record couldn’t be corrected.”
He offered an example.
“An evaluator stated that the recommended vendor (Tidewater) offered the best value of all three proposals … the most hours, frequency and coverage,” Esposito told the City Commission. “That statement was accepted by other evaluators. Instead, this is factually wrong and misleading.
“The transcript shows the competitor was credited with 66,800 hours for the first year. Our proposal explicitly listed 83,515 hours. That’s about 25% more service hours for less money. That’s not a minor issue.”
Written materials protesting the bid award also say that Altuve’s scoring of Circuit and Tidewater indicated a bias in the proceedings.
“She reduced Circuit’s score to 59 (from 80) while awarding Via (Tidewater) a perfect 100 (from 90) — a drastic and unsupportable shift in a procurement where the requirement changed nominally,” an attorney for Circuit wrote to the city.
“No reasonable or documented basis could support such a change in scoring. … The only plausible inference is that Altuve’s evaluation was influenced by improper external factors, personal favoritism, or bias, rather than an objective assessment of the proposal materials as required by the RFP (request for proposals) criteria.”
At the protest, commissioners expressed some discomfort with other aspects of securing this service, such as why the DDA wasn’t involved in the second selection committee and why Tidewater was starting off with only one short, fixed route.
“Is there an option for us to be the selection committee and start over, so that we’re able to see and hear things from the beginning?” asked Commissioner Christy Fox, who represents downtown.
The commission has been the final arbiter in major service contracts in the past, including controversial decisions to select the operators of the Sunset Lounge and a downtown security service.
None of Fox’s fellow commissioners were on board with making the selection themselves, however, and that would not follow the procedure when bid protests occur, the city attorney told the commission.