Seeing rigorous public board work for the first time in 10 yrs in Memphis is both encouraging and invigorating. Such work is now occurring with the new MATA Board under Emily Greer’s leadership. Greer was appointed MATA Board Chair by Mayor Paul Young who recently replaced a challenged MATA Board.

At one point in the marathon of committee meetings on Friday 11/13, Chair Greer asked for data "benchmarks" after attempting to contextualize MATA performance data. Regarding some articulated MATA data, Greer asked,  "Relative to what?" Good for Greer ! Benchmarks, despised by local elititists, help move Memphis out of the stone age while bringing meaning to public performance data. 

Keep in mind there are powerful local interests in Memphis that seem to want a botched public transit system with the Greater Memphis Chamber being one of them. The Chamber in early 2024 was publicly cheering on former MATA CEO Gary Rosenfeld as he was being handed 27 deficiencies by the Federal Government in MATA's public transit Triennial Review. MATA will serve themselves by getting as far away from the Chamber as they can by taking steps, for example, to save money and not paying for Chamber Chairman's Circle membership. 

In addition to Board replacement, earlier this year, Mayor Young transitioned the City of Memphis from an annual lump sum grantor of $30M to a MATA fiscal agent. In this way, City public employees are learning federal transit regulation when tasked with writing monthly checks to reimburse MATA for public transit expenditures.

(The former is exactly what needs to happen with the Shelby County Government becoming a public workforce development fiscal agent, after the community has struggled for years with publicly delegated workforce development fiscal agency.)

And Mayor Young’s gut leanings towards more OnDemand service over increased fixed route bus service seem on target. Recent data compiled by the Taxpayer Justice Institute, from the recent release of the 2023 Federal Transit Database (FTD) reveals that OnDemand average trip costs are a strength for Memphis when compared with 9 other peer cities. The peer city group includes: Birmingham, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orelans, Oklahoma City and St. Louis. 

The 2023 FTD further confirms Memphis OnDemand cost leadership strength from 2022 to 2023. With, in 2022, a #2 of 10 peer ranking and average trip cost of $45.25, Memphis improved to a #1 peer ranking in 2023 with an average trip cost of $31.31. This cost beat the average of the peer group by a considerable margin and #2 Louisville by more than 30%. At the same time, Memphis remained last in the peer group in fixed route bus average trip cost with an average trip costing $18.39.

The extreme favorable and unfavorable cost rankings point to both an imbalance in the transit network configuration and an opportunity. A more balanced network would likely result in higher OnDemand and lower fixed route average trip costs while improving reliability. On time performance with OnDemand, per MATA records, greatly exceeds that of fixed route service. Increased OnDemand service would likely require OnDemand costs to increase while fixed route costs would fall.

I recently attended a 5-hour long MATA Board series of committee meetings. The board work was intense and rigorous in preparation for the upcoming MATA Board meeting. The Board is currently focused on 1) funding, 2) taking steps to expedite their annual audit irritated by unreliable financial technology procured by the former board and 3) preparing to consider an external intervention by Transpro Consulting to redesign the MATA organization. After the public botching of MATA, this external redesign while collaborating with local MATA staff, is likely unavoidable.

Pictured on the top row is Councilor Budget Chair Chase Carlisle, Comptroller Jason Mumpower and Council Chair Elect Ford Canale. MATA Interim CEO Bacarra Mauldin is pictured on the bottom left.

In February 2024, MATA’s current Interim CEO, Bacarra Mauldin, inherited a public MATA disaster. The best Mauldin likely could do was to prepare MATA for an outside intervention and that has been done.

This public MATA botch was enabled by an impotent MATA Board and botched Council oversight led by Ford Canale and Chase Carlisle. Canale chaired the Council Transportation Committee in 2022 and 2023, and Carlisle chaired the Council Budget Committee in 2023. Neither Canale nor Carlisle ever asked for a MATA budget or current financials. This furthered lacking public knowledge of MATA’s spiraling decline as Canale and Carlisle facilitated the award of millions more to MATA. 

Additionally, this decline occurred as the State Comptroller looked the other way, while residing in the same downtown office building as MATA. The Comptroller claims to be the State’s chief public money cop but has been AWOL on MATA. Recent MATA Board training reveals just how bad matters had become, with the State Comptroller and City Council looking the other way. Here is a snapshot of the December 4, 2024 training:

1. FY25 MATA Budget adopted 100 days after the start of the fiscal year.

2. Management requests not focused on the customer.

3. Since 2022, [MATA Board] gave the CEO purchase authority to execute over $125M in purchased contract services despite dwindling financial resources.

4. $60M in COVID funds were squandered as core services were allowed to deteriorate.

5. There is a clear lack of [MATA] technical and financial capacity to complete a single large capital project like the Innovation Corridor, let alone a second BRT project and new operations and maintenance facility.

During 2022 and 2023 it seemed MATA and the City Council were hyper-focused on these $100M+ futuristic Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) electric bus capital projects. BRT systems promise to deliver an elevated level of frequency and faster service along heavily traveled corridors. Most public return on investment (ROI) models would yield a positive ROI only if overall ridership increased in a given service area.

But after conducting some research, the Taxpayer Justice Institute (TJI) found that BRT’s across the country, on average, had not increased ridership. On average, BRT systems only marginally slowed declines in ridership. So TJI’s conclusion is that the expensive and distracting BRT is not all it’s cracked up to be.

But the good news is that MATA is improving with a rigorous new MATA Board.

The key performance indicators (KPIs) that MATA is currently using are in order and are focused on ridership, on-time performance and more. Another KPI has been publicly requested and has to do with YTD and monthly average trip costs on each of the fixed routes and OnDemand zones. This information could be provided in table format and inserted into the CEO presentation as shown in the below example. Additionally, a read out of all unanswered MATA public information requests remains outstanding. The read out should mention when each request will be answered or why a given request won’t be answered.

All that to say, this board has the potential to be transformational for the Memphis community. And that is not to mention the increased developing public capacity occurring through City of Memphis fiscal agency.  

NOTICE: The below table serves just as an example for the requested public reporting format. The costs are inaccurate.