Taxpayers paid more than enough to have an operating Downtown Steel Railed Trolley. Turns out the Trolley is another Memphis City Council public ripoff. As the public awaits the MATA forensic audit, this ripoff occurred during Greater Memphis Chamber championed, Gary Rosenfeld's MATA CEO term (2019-23).

This local media uncovered Memphis City Council MATA public ripoff is an active operating conspiracy that spans 2019-Present, and involves direct public inner city disinvestment. 

Based on an informed anecdotal account, when the Downtown Trolley brakes failed for a second time, the Memphis City Council, in early 2024, was unwilling to produce $1.2M in local funds to fix the brakes.

This lack of local funding doomed the top fixed route in the MATA system with over 300K passengers, while also dismissing the historic ambience offered by the Downtown Trolley. Reckless to say the least !

And the lack of local funding comes after the apparent squandering of $9.5M in mostly Federal capital funds (2019-23). The following will review the apparent squandering, supported with data from the National Transit Database and informed anecdotal accounts.

When reading the following, please know that Memphis spent $9.5M and Little Rock spent $2.2M in capital funds, each with 5 operational steel railed trolley cars (2019-23). Unlike Memphis, Little Rock’s trolley is in operation. And know, that opposed to using tracks, fake bus trolleys tear up and hinder the mall walkway.

It must be stated that City Council Chairman Ford Canale was the Council Transportation Chair from 2022-23 and current Budget Chair Chase Carlisle rammed through a $20M City of Memphis outstanding MATA loan in November 2023.

Neither Canale nor Carlise ever requested any MATA public financial accountability 2022-23. In this way, a MATA course correcting intervention should have come much sooner than 2024. But, over time public oversight has failed, with finanical recklessness prevailing. As far as non-operational historic capital spend (2019-23), lets review.

Guideway – Spending on track infrastructure totaled $3.2M with $1.3M spent in FY23, just prior to the trolley shutdown. Which tracks were funds wasted? Tracks other than downtown would be a squandering of funds. After all, Memphians were only counting on the Downtown Trolley running and not Madison or the Riverfront.  

Stations and Trolley Maintenance – It would be interesting to know where $1.35M was spent on trolley stations. Only $960K was spent on trolley maintenance or $200K per year. Perhaps neglected minimal maintenance spend was the source of the 2024 $1.2M local funds request for trolley brake failure.

Passenger Trolley Vehicles - $3.2M was spent on trolley passenger vehicles, with $2.1M and $730K of the capital spending occurring in 2020 and 2021.

Anecdotal accounts point to trolley purchases from Charlotte, NC (2-3 trolleys) and North County in California (6 red trolley cars). But none of these procurred trolleys fit the tracks in Memphis. In other words, wasted public money!

Also, Charlotte is from where Transpro’s John Lewis came. Transpro consulting services have been a local failure. And again, from an informed source, unable to fit into local trolley storage facilities, 6 of the trolleys, purchased from North County, CA, are sitting in storage in Louisiana. Louisiana ! Makes one wonder if the Trolley cars are even there or have been physically ripped. 

The former anecdotal account, has resulted in new MATA public information requests for confirmation purposes regarding total trolley inventory, procurement, disposal and storage. The former raises this question:

Are local punk public ripoff Elitists trafficking in Trolley Cars?

Other Non-Passenger Vehicles – And to round findings out, $239K was spent on non-passenger, trolley support vehicles. $55K was spent in 2021 and $183K in 2023. The former $183K is really odd and comes just before the trolley shutdown.

The 2019 elected Memphis City Council members are total public failures. These are the 2019 elected Councilors: Ford Canale, Rhonda Logan, Edmund Ford, Sr., Dr. Michalyn Easter Thomas, JB Smiley, Chase Carlisle, and Dr. Jeff Warren.

And the new Historic Council has signed on to the MATA ripoff. None are publicly repulsed at what has happened to the transit system. But most of the MATA ripoff did in fact precede the 2023 Historic Council.

Under the watch of the 2019 Council members, both Downtown and MATA have imploded, while the taxpayer has been ripped off through various public schemes. And its not “systemic racism” but instead, runaway elitism….

New MATA Public Information Requests

Please provide a listing of all MATA owned trolley cars and the MATA assigned asset value for each trolley car.

Please provide procurement and disposal records for Trolley cars acquired from July 1, 2018 to the present with bills of sale.

Please provide MATA contracts, to include expired contracts, for Trolley car storage from July 1, 2018 to present. 

Check the Facts

National Transit Database - https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd