MATA Board absurdity persists. At the last City Council meeting, MATA Board Chair Emily Greer asked for $15M more in annually recurring taxpayer MATA funding. But Greer presented no ridership data. In fact, unlike other peer transit agencies, MATA stopped reporting bus ridership data to the Federal Government after December 2024. What is up with that?

And in Brian Marflak’s MATA Board Rider Experience committee, no bus ridership data is presented. Seems something from Marflak’s private FedEx background would transition to the public sector. After all, public ridership is the MATA product. Without ridership data, average trip cost cannot be calculated to cost optimize the MATA network. At FedEx, would Marflak risk flying empty planes around all the time due to a lack of package data? Don’t think so.  

But again, the MATA Board, accompanied by MATA Transpro consulting CEO, John Lewis, is asking taxpayers to come up with $15M more in annually recurring dollars to support MATA. But for what? With no ridership data, neither the MATA Board or the $2.2M Transpro consulting group can provide the public with any answers. Really, the City spent $2.2M with Transpro and neither they nor the MATA Board can tell the public how many bus rider trips are occurring?

To cost optimize the MATA network, CURRENT  fixed route ridership and operating expenses are needed for each of MATA’s fixed bus routes, to calculate average trip costs for individual routes. Without that data, the MATA network cannot be cost optimized.

A closer review of the Federal Transit Database (FTD) reveals opportunities to cost optimize the MATA network through a reduction in fixed bus routes and on-demand expansion. Based on FY23 FTD data, the MATA network appears out of balance, with grossly deficient high average trip costs for fixed bus routes and excellent low on-demand costs. In this way, pursuing a measure of network equilibrium can help achieve MATA network cost optimization. Let’s take a closer look:

For this analysis, the peer group has been expanded beyond the 10 Chamber selected peer cities, to include nearby Little Rock and cities that have a 200-300 mile service area with ridership between 2-3.5M. Those additional cities include New Bedford MA, Omaha and Concord CA.

MATA always screams that their service area challenges the agency with high costs. But that is just not the case. Large service area concerns point to inadequate population density to support ridership. But the fact is, in the new peer group, Memphis has near average population density at 2,489 per service area square mile, compared to the peer group average of 2,550.

Next, using data from the FY23 FTD, Memphis has the highest average trip cost on fixed route buses at $18.39 compared to the average for the group of $11.70. As far as on demand, Memphis excels with an average network trip cost of $31.31. In this way, to lower network costs, MATA needs to expand on demand, while eliminating ineffecient fixed bus routes.

Given the data, there is no need to increase funding for fixed route buses. In fact, when querying the FTD for agencies with 200-300 mile service area and 2-3.5M annual riders, Memphis had the highest fixed bus route operating costs and a botched system. So explain that !

Does MATA need more money after being ripped off? Sure, in one-time funds to pay off bills and perhaps an annually recurring MLGW sponsorship for the real electrical trolley, but that’s about it. Again, no increased recurring funding is needed to support empty unreliable buses on fixed routes.  

In fact, bus routes should be cut to fund more reliability through on demand in support of an optimized, cost sustainable MATA transit network. More recurring bus route funding is not the answer, nor is a renewal of the Transpro consulting contract. Transpro has done nothing, while being unwilling to leverage their outside consulting luxury of delivering local bad news, with a recommendation to cut fixed bus routes.

With the needed individual fixed route and on demand data, the City Council can cost optimize the MATA network. After all, as former Council and MATA Board member, John Vergos said, “figuring out MATA is just not that hard”.