Tag: MATA

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City Continues Transit Vision Planning Process, Opens Second Public Survey

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

The city, in collaboration with Innovate Memphis and the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) are moving forward in the Memphis 3.0 transit vision planning process.

After beginning in September with stakeholder meetings, followed by public engagement, the question remains should MATA allocate resources to services that promote high ridership and more frequency or services that cover a large percent of the city with less frequency.

Scudder Wagg of Jarrett Walker + Associates, the transit consultant group working with the city to develop the comprehensive plan, said that currently about 40 percent of MATA’s resources go toward services conducive to high ridership, while 60 percent of resources are used for services that provide more coverage.

“But, is that the right split for Memphis?” Wagg asked.

To answer this question, the public was asked if they prefer walking further distances to bus stops with less wait times or shorter walks and longer waits. The majority of respondents, Wagg said, prefer a shorter wait time.

Based on this, consultants at JWA produced a second report, outlining four basic concepts for the future of Memphis’ transit system.

Two of the options are revenue neutral. The first, most similar to today’s network is the Coverage concept, in which routes extend well beyond the city’s core into the southern and eastern edges of the city. However, with the focus on coverage, less buses frequent each route causing wait times to be more than 30 minutes, and in most cases, greater than 60.

Contrarily, the second concept, which aims to increase ridership, concentrates services in high-density areas within the I-240 loop. While buses on all routes would run every 30 minutes or less, some neighborhoods, namely in the eastern and southeastern areas of the city, would lose access to services completely.

With about $45 million of additional funding, Wagg said MATA could provide a service that increases bus frequency as well as extends coverage to less dense areas.

[pullquote-1]“If you don’t increase resources, it’ll be painful,” Wagg said.

CEO of MATA Gary Rosenfeld agreed, saying that funding for the city’s transit system has been stagnant for years. “We need to change that for the benefit of the community.”

Wagg said there are two basic concepts, both requiring increased funding, that promote high ridership and further coverage. 

The Coverage PLUS concept would increase bus frequency on all routes and maintain most of the current coverage. With this concept, buses on each route would come every 30 minutes or less. Resources would be equally allocated between services that garner high ridership and those that provide coverage to low-density areas.

The second concept, Ridership PLUS, would use 80 percent of funding for services that increase ridership, while 20 percent would be allocated for services that extend coverage.

Scudder Wagg of Jarrett Walker + Associates

Chart illustrates accessibility from Downtown based on the four different concepts

This concept, Wagg said, has the most frequent services, with five high-frequency routes traveling east-west out of downtown and two going north-south.

Both of these concepts also include replacing fixed route services in Southwest Memphis with a demand responsive transit, or dial-a-ride service. It would run on flexible routes and connect to a new transit center near Mitchell and 3rd Street.

Wagg adds that the concepts are not meant to prompt an “either-or” decision, but rather to provide a range of concepts that “frame the extreme ends.”

Over the next two months, Innovate Memphis staff will lead outreach at transit centers and various community events to survey the public on the four concepts. The survey is also available online. 

After the public engagement wraps up, a recommended network will be drafted in February, with the final vision plan slated to be complete by May.

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News News Blog

MATA Board Appoints Gary Rosenfeld as Permanent CEO

Gary Rosenfeld

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) board of commissioners formally appointed Gary Rosenfeld as MATA’s new chief executive officer on Tuesday.

Rosenfeld has served as the interim CEO since January and according to MATA leadership, since then he’s managed to begin leading a strategic vision in partnership with the board, while building relationships with stakeholder groups in the community.

Additionally, he was able to negotiate a labor agreement with unionized MATA employees who are a part of the Amalgamated Transit Union 713.

“I am thankful for the opportunity to be named to lead MATA as its permanent chief executive officer and I look forward to continuing to making improvements to our public transportation system,” Rosenfeld said. “We are in the process of strategically building a successful transit future for MATA and I am honored to be given the opportunity to guide the organization at this critical time.”

With over 30 years of experience in transit, Rosenfeld is responsible for nationally recognized transportation programs at Yosemite National Park. He’s also served as the director of operations at Laidlaw Transit Services, which provides public transit, as well as school and charter transportation to 21 agencies, school districts, and governing boards.

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Cover Feature News

Bus to the Future: Changes Lie Ahead for MATA

If you catch the 19 Vollintine at Breedlove on a weekday morning, you might run into Cynthia Bailey. She’ll be waiting at the stop about 15 minutes before the bus comes with her backpack — full of what she calls her tools to educate citizens — over her shoulder.

As she rides the 19 to the Hudson Transit Center downtown, she starts conversations with fellow passengers and passes out the flyers. After staying at the bus station for about an hour, Bailey then packs up her materials, boards the 50 Poplar, and heads to her next destination: Cleveland and Poplar, where she sets up shop again.

Bailey, the co-chair of the Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU), says this is her routine most days. She spends her time educating other bus riders and non-bus riders on all things Memphis-transit-related. She considers herself an expert on riding public transit in Memphis because, as she says, she’s been using the buses here for 26 years.

Back in the ’90s, she rode a Memphis city bus to Raleigh-Egypt High School. Bailey has continued to use Memphis public transit ever since — even during periods when she owned a car. She called herself a “choice-rider” then.

Bailey now spends her time riding the bus around town and advocating for a better public transit system in Memphis — “like it used to be,” she says.

Bailey says she remembers the buses being more timely and more frequent, and they operated for longer hours. This, as well as better timing with route connections, is something she and other MBRU members have set as goals for the current system.

Still, Bailey says her “biggest issue” with the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) is its lack of penetration into some residential areas. One of those is North Memphis, which for some time has had no bus service on streets such as Breedlove, Decatur, Manassas, and Firestone.

But, in June, the MATA board voted for a new route to bring service to those areas and others that were once served by the 31 Crosstown — a route that was eliminated in 2013 due to funding issues and that has been described as a “lifeline” by many in the community.

MATA will introduce 31 Firestone, along with three other new routes, for a trial period beginning this Sunday.

Bailey says she is pleased with the way MATA responded to the union and community’s pleas for a restored service to North Memphis.

MATA officials say that in order for the 31 Firestone route to continue after December, it needs to maintain at least five boards per hour throughout the course of the trial.

Chief communications officer for MATA, Nicole Lacey, says the Firestone 31 route comes as a result of the community’s feedback and expressed needs.

With limited funding, the route will only operate 10 hours a day, though, running for four hours in the morning, breaking in the middle of the day, and resuming for six hours in the afternoon through the evening.

Bailey says the MBRU, along with other organizations across the city, put in a lot of hard work to bring awareness to the missing service in areas like New Chicago in North Memphis, by holding town hall meetings, creating petitions, going door to door to pass out flyers, and educating members of the community. A key piece of the education was informing citizens on the reasons MATA elected to discontinue the 31 Crosstown route. She says the union understands it was because of funding issues, rather than a matter of discrimination, and it was important for the community to know that in order to properly petition for the service’s return.

Many of the residents in the New Chicago neighborhood are seniors who have been living in the community since the 1950s and ’60s, Bailey says. “They need a way to get to doctor’s appointments and everywhere else without having to pay for a ride or bother a family member,” she says. “It’s a victory for everyone.”

The new route, 31 Firestone, set to launch Sunday, August 6th, will run every 60 minutes, with stops including Manassas High School, Crosstown Concourse, North Public Library, and Christ Community Health Services.

Members of the MBRU believe it will provide those living in North Memphis communities better connections to groceries, jobs, and health care.

MBRU secretary Justin Davis says there is still a large population of people in South Memphis — once served by 31 Crosstown— who currently are not “necessarily well-served” by MATA.

Some of those residents include individuals living in the Riverside community who, Davis says, have expressed their need for a route that will connect them to major corridors, economic centers, and other essential spots in North Memphis. The next step for the union, he says, is to campaign for a fully funded route that directly connects South and North Memphis.

“Our goal is really to make sure MATA does not have groups that are significantly underserved,” Davis says.

For now, though, Davis says the union is pausing to celebrate the service coming to the New Chicago area by throwing a block party at the New Chicago CDC Saturday beginning at noon.

The party is meant to “raise the energy” around the new service, as well as provide an opportunity to make sure the members of the community know about the new route.

Interim CEO of MATA Gary Rosenfeld

New Routes and Route Changes

The Firestone 31 route is a demonstration route, which will run on a trial basis until December. Interim CEO of MATA Gary Rosenfeld says MATA ordinarily introduces new routes and makes changes to its routes and schedules in December and April. He adds, that after extra funding was made available for three new routes, the August 6th changes will be an exception.

The extra funding comes through the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) program, which pays for air-improving transportation projects in areas that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined have poor air quality.

The grants will fund the three routes for three years, but Rosenfeld says the hope is that in the future these routes will be able to support themselves.

Two of three routes will be express routes, including one meant to “beef up service” near the Airways Transit Center, creating more efficient transfers, according to MATA’s director of planning and scheduling, John Lancaster.

The other express route — 340 Walnut Grove — will go from the Agricenter International to the Hudson Transit Center downtown and will offer a “park and ride” option, in which riders can park their cars at the Agricenter free of charge, catch the bus downtown, and return to their car at the end of the day.

In June, the MATA board also approved changes to 24 existing routes and their schedules. Routes that will be modified include 44 Goodlett IKEA Way, as well as two of MATA’s most used routes, 42 Crosstown and 50 Poplar.

All of the changes are designed to improve MATA’s on-time performance (OTP), which was at 76 percent as of June. Rosenfeld says he expects the latest route changes to raise OTP by at least another 5 percent.

Lancaster says there is a “whole process” that goes into determining where new routes should be placed and how often the buses on that route should run.

He says the authority uses a strategic planning document called the Short Range Transit Plan, which helps staff consider a particular area’s demographic makeup and land use, as well as the amount of jobs and residences in the area.

Because of a funding shortage, MATA must make revenue neutral service improvements. These are, as the name suggests, improvements that do not affect MATAs bottom line. With the exception of the 31 Firestone route, all of the new routes and improvements to the current routes are revenue neutral.

South Main trolleys under repair

The Trolleys’ Return

After a three-year absence, Rosenfeld says he’s hopeful the steel-wheel trolleys will be resurrected by year’s end, returning first to Main Street.

Before the trolleys were discontinued in 2014, after fires and other safety and inspection issues, MATA officials say about 1.5 million passengers used them annually. Half of the passengers were tourists.

It was important to bring back the trolleys, says Rosenfeld, not only because of their positive impact on downtown’s economy, but also because of their “rich history in the city. … It’s something the community wanted.”

Rosenfeld says restoring the trolleys has been an “extensive ongoing process that never ends.” One of the biggest challenges in restoring the trolleys, he says, was figuring out how to apply modern technology to 100-year-old trolley cars. Rosenfeld says the trolleys were modernized by re-engineering everything inside of them.

Before the trolleys are ready for passengers — after multiple levels of testing by engineers and safety committees and a review by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Authority — the trolleys must operate on a test basis for about four to six weeks without passengers. If all goes as planned and the vehicles are deemed safe, steel-wheel trolleys will begin carrying passengers on Main Street late this year, followed by trolleys on Riverside and Madison sometime in 2018.

Trolley tracks on South Main on the mall

Funding Obstacles

One obstacle that keeps MATA from being the transit system that Memphis deserves, says Rosenfeld, is a lack of funding.

Currently, MATA’s operating budget is about $62 million per year, but Rosenfeld says in order to provide a good, quality service to the community, MATA needs an additional $30 million a year.

“Quality of service suffers when you’re operating on a shoestring budget,” Rosenfeld says. Because of low funding, he acknowledges that buses don’t run frequently enough for many passengers to rely on public transit to get them to school, work, the doctor’s office, etc. “If you look at our peer cities, like Nashville or Charlotte, either they have better funding or a denser population,” he says. “But they provide transit that allows people to really be mobile.”

About 35 percent of the MATA operating budget is allocated to wages. Without much discretionary funding, Rosenfeld says MATA is unable to make certain improvements and investments, including renovations to its 4,500 bus stops, newer buses, and equipment that would make it easier for the public to use the transit system, such as a MATA app for smartphones.

Rosenfeld says with more funding, the authority could also invest in better training for bus operators, which would improve the overall efficiency of the system. More secure funding, he says, would allow MATA to improve the “quality and the quantity of service in the city.”

There is some good news on that front. On July 1st, when the IMPROVE Act took effect in Tennessee, avenues opened for MATA to secure additional funding. The legislation gives the city council the opportunity to authorize a public vote on extra funding initiatives, such as a sales tax surcharge, vehicle registration fees, or occupancy taxes in hotels.

Rosenfeld says in the fall, MATA will begin putting together a proposal package to present to the city council early next year. Under the stipulations of IMPROVE, the presentation must include a stakeholder-sourced document detailing the community’s vision and goals for the future of MATA. Rosenfeld says there will be a lot of “information sharing” among organizations like Innovate Memphis to create this document, beginning in the fall.

As MATA begins to gather community feedback from stakeholders, Davis of the MBRU says he hopes this will be something that will include his union members. “We have always held that bus riders have the real expertise when it comes to transit systems and how they work,” Davis says. “They are the people riding the buses every day.”

Bus to the Future

Rosenfeld says he believes electric buses are the future of public transportation in the nation and, he hopes, for MATA as well. At the end of June, MATA applied to the Federal Transit Administration to receive 16 electric buses. Rosenfeld expects to hear back by the end of the year, anticipating that MATA will receive at least four of the buses, allowing for an entirely electric vehicle route to be created.

MATA is testing out one new electric bus that it has already received.

As for MATA ridership, Rosenfeld says it has been decreasing over recent years, following the national trend which, depending on the region of the country, has dropped 5 to 10 percent in the last two years. Most attribute the national decline to the recent uptick in ride-sharing app users, such as Uber and Lyft. MATA officials say more than 22,000 riders are using its near 50 routes each weekday.

Moving forward, Rosenfeld hopes to make MATA’s services easier to use, closer to necessities, and more responsive, while creating more equity for riders.

MATA’s goal, eventually, he says, is to provide a transit system that “gets anyone to anywhere in the city of Memphis in no more than an hour.”

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Opinion The Last Word

New Destination

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Memphians are facing a public transit crisis.

Ask anyone who relies on our bus system to get to work or school or uses it to run routine errands, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Buses are unreliable, the rides are too long, and, in many cases, their routes are nonsensical. Riders from neighborhoods that were previously served by routes like the 31 Crosstown now find themselves without a dedicated bus route, which means a long walk to the closest bus stop and an even longer ride to their destination. Routes to major employment centers are basically nonexistent from these neighborhoods, furthering the economic segregation that, you guessed it, intersects with race: Black Memphians in particular make up 90 percent of bus riders, and over 30 percent of these Memphians live in poverty. The median annual income of workers who use public transit is just over $16,000, and transportation expenses consume 27 percent of their median household income.

Memphis Area Transit Authority CEO Ron Garrison agrees that there is a public transit crisis. In separate columns in The Commercial Appeal and The Memphis Flyer, Garrison painted a dire picture of MATA’s ongoing financial state. According to his most recent column, MATA is underfunded by more than $20 million in comparison to peer cities’ transit systems, due in large part to decreased ridership and targeted budget cuts during Mayor A C Wharton’s tenure. Garrison acknowledges that these factors have forced MATA to make some tough decisions — such as consolidating the routes of the 31 Crosstown, 43 Elvis Presley, and 10 Watkins into the new 42 Crosstown route — that have further impacted ridership and increased ill will between MATA and bus riders. Garrison’s Flyer column ends with the MATA CEO imploring riders and other concerned citizens to contact their elected officials and ask that they give more consideration to MATA’s funding issues.

Justin Fox Burks

Members of the Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU), an advocacy group of bus riders founded by “Mother” Georgia A. King, will point out instances where previous significant funding awards were dedicated to reinstating the downtown trolley system instead of restoring key services to underserved neighborhoods and increasing the overall effectiveness of routes outside of downtown. Members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 713, who have partnered with the MBRU, agree. In his Commercial Appeal column, Garrison identifies the restarting of the trolleys as an important goal for future MATA operations. MBRU members are long past disappointment at these statements, instead attributing the seeming dismissal of their concerns to a longstanding philosophy that prioritizes the concerns of business-minded developers over those of everyday citizens.

The Memphis Bus Riders Union has called the 31 Crosstown “a lifeline” for thousands of Memphians who often could not afford the cost or upkeep of a vehicle and lived in segregation far from their jobs or schools. MATA employees credit the 2012 Short Range Transit Plan (SRTP), conducted by Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates, as key to their decision to consolidate old routes into the new 42 Crosstown route. The SRTP did indeed call for consolidation of routes that used the same thoroughfares. It also positioned downtown Memphis as MATA’s strongest market for riders, criticized circuitous neighborhood routes, and identified MATA’s current funding woes vis-à-vis cities with similar populations and transit system considerations. But the SRTP also cited North Memphis, South Memphis, and Frayser as rapidly increasing transit use neighborhoods and advised MATA about the necessity of broad geographic coverage for riders.

I am a former bus rider. My first time catching the 31 Crosstown bus was when I was 8 years old: I rode it to school. In times when my family didn’t have a car, we relied on it to get to work and run household errands, like buying groceries and paying bills. I caught the 31 Crosstown at a stop on the corner of Firestone and Tully — a stop that does not exist on the 42 Crosstown’s current route. My ride on the 31 Crosstown would end at the intersection of Vollintine and Watkins, where I would then cross both streets to catch the 10 Watkins to Delano Elementary School. If I had to catch the current bus, the 42 Crosstown, I would have to find some way to get to the Vollintine and Watkins stop, the closest stop on the 42 Crosstown’s route to my home in North Memphis. If I were a student trying to get to Manassas High School from New Chicago, which my younger brother currently does, I would have to walk a mile down Firestone, a street full of industrial blight with few safe crosswalks or sidewalks. Students of the former Northside High School who have been re-zoned to Manassas face an even longer walk to their new school.

The increased difficulty of student access has undoubtedly led to closures of historic neighborhood schools like Northside and Booker T. Washington. People who live in the neighborhood now called Uptown have no real route out of their community and into employment or shopping districts of the city. I imagine that the same reality exists for residents of the Riverview-Kansas neighborhood that bookended the southern end of the 31 Crosstown’s route. Reinstating the former routes or creating new routes that more adequately serve neighborhood residents would be a start to fixing this. Investing funding toward repairing these routes in addition to repairing the trolleys would work as well.

Memphis cannot continue to provide inadequate transit services to its riders. Our ineffecient, underfunded transit system contributes to the massive economic and racial segregation that affects countless citizens in this city, and we continue that segregation to our own detriment. According to a 2015 report from the American Public Transportation Association, every dollar we spend on a safe, effective public transit system can generate $4 in economic returns. Public transit drives the local economy and directly generates business sales, revenues and new private investment through ridership expansion and an increasingly mobile workforce.

Memphis is enjoying a period of exciting growth right now, but continued equitable development depends on a strong, reliable public transit system that adequately serves all citizens. As is the case with so many other public concerns, true change in this area will require work from everyone, not just those concerned or an affected few.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphian and writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology and Make Memphis magazine.

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News The Fly-By

MATA Proposes New Routes

As rain beat against the windows of the Airways Transit Center last Thursday, Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) officials provided details and received feedback on a series of service adjustments that could begin by December.

The changes, affecting fixed-route bus service, will include eight new bus routes, 11 routes with timing adjustments, 10 routes with increased frequencies and span of service, 14 routes with routing adjustments, and one discontinued route that will have service replaced by others.

The adjustments represent about $500,000 in added service grants from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program.

MATA officials say the proposed changes will improve service by simplifying routing and increasing productivity, but riders who attended the meeting expressed exhaustion and confusion over the adjustments. That puzzlement appeared at times to be a miscommunication between officials and bus riders. At other points, though, the frazzle felt as though it was brought on by how complicated the city’s bus system can be — even without the changes.

“All these changes being made might be great for someone, but I don’t know who is benefiting,” said Leonard Ewing, a member of the Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU). Ewing was concerned that a change to the 57 Park route eliminating service to a portion of Lamar at Bellevue would affect him. “It might be rain-storming like it is today, and I’ll have to jump off this bus and take another bus and then hop on another bus — rain, shine, sleet, or snow — if I want to get to work.”

MATA’s Planning Manager John Lancaster, the session’s mediator, said a newly adjusted Route 56 to Lamar will pass by Bellevue and add service on Sundays.

A lack of Sunday service, particularly along Route 19 Vollintine, leaves residents who are dependent on the transit system stuck in their neighborhoods, said MBRU co-chair Cynthia Bailey.

“I’ve had a lot of riders in the community come to me that want to go to church or go visit family on Sundays,” Bailey said. “It’s almost like you can’t get out. If you have business, there’s the number 8 and route 52. But you’ve got elderly people who can’t walk that far. I’m hearing about the new 45 Appling Farm route … but it’s not benefitting the community.”

The Memphis Bus Riders Union has also created a petition to bring back the 31 Crosstown route, which was cut in 2013. Members say it was instrumental in connecting two high-poverty neighborhoods, New Chicago and Riverside, with the rest of the city.

“Those neighborhoods have seen a lot of decline,” said Justin Davis, secretary of the MBRU. “There are eight new routes … a lot of those are out East and in the southeast. Our concern is if we’re taking all of this energy to put all of these routes in the east and southeast, are we putting the same effort into North and South Memphis? New Chicago, transit-wise, is almost entirely isolated. If you don’t have a car, you pretty much can’t leave.”

Lancaster said it took $3.5 million dollars to service the 31 Crosstown route before it was eliminated.

“To bring it back as it was, we would need $3.5 million dollars of new funding,” Lancaster said. “However, with the way things have been restructured, it would be a challenge. But we may be able to add some additional service to complement what used to exist.”

MATA will accept feedback on December’s proposed adjustments until September 7th. Additionally, the MBRU will host a demonstration calling on MATA to restore the 31 Crosstown Route on Saturday, Sept. 17th from 11 a.m. to 2 pm. at the New Chicago Community Development Corporation.

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News News Blog

MATA Security Guard Placed on Diversion in Passenger Death

Adicus Mitchell

A private security guard responsible for pushing a Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) passenger, which resulted in that passenger’s death, has been placed on diversion for three years. 

On May 6th of last year, a bus driver at the North Main terminal alerted security guard Adicus Mitchell that he had an unruly passenger on board, and Mitchell responded by forcefully pushing the passenger off the bus. The passenger, 69-year-old Robert Gray, landed face-first and lay motionless on the concrete. Mitchell wasn’t a MATA employee but was hired to as a security guard at the terminal.

Gray was hospitalized in critical condition and later transferred to a long-term care facility. He died there from complications from his fall on August 3rd, 2014. Gray had been allegedly been making obscene remarks to a female passenger when the driver alerted Mitchell.

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee granted Mitchell’s request for diversion, a type of probation that will erase the conviction from his record after three years of good behavior.

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News The Fly-By

MATA Reduces Bus Fares for Students, MLGW Defers High Bills Through August

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) began reducing bus fares for all Shelby County School students on August 8th, the first day of classes.

“It is important that we are able to help parents send their children off to school at a reduced cost and improve their access to public transportation,” said Ron Garrison, CEO of MATA.

The annual reduced student fare is $1.35 per one-way bus trip. Students may also purchase daily passes ($2.75), seven-day passes ($13), or a month-long ($40) MATA FastPass unlimited ride card.

Students must present a MATA identification card with their name, school, age, and photo to receive a discounted fare when boarding the bus. MATA advises students to bring two forms of identification and $3 to the William Hudson Transit Center at 444 N. Main Street to purchase an identification card. Students who bring a parent only need one form of identification. State or school identification cards, birth certificates, insurance cards, Social Security cards, or report cards qualify.

The transit authority will provide identification cards Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. until September 30th. Following that date, MATA will provide identification cards Mondays through Fridays from 1 to 5 p.m., and from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m on Saturdays.

“MATA is pleased to continue to offer reduced bus passes for students to ride,” Garrison said.

MATA lowers fares for students.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) will ease its deferred billing rules through August to prevent customers with high bills from having their utilities disconnected.

“The major benefit is, during these extreme temperatures, MLGW has a payment plan that will offset our customers from having their services disconnected for non-payment,” said Gale Jones Carson, MLGW’s director of corporate communications. “If you can’t pay the total amount, we’ll work with you during these temperatures.”

Customers eligible for the loosened billing rules must have a bill that exceeds at least $250. They will pay 25 percent of the owed amount or $250, whichever is less, and the remainder will go on a payment plan that lasts up to five months. Should the deferred billing payment surpass a monthly $500 balance, customers may establish a payment plan for up to nine months. A current and approved residential service agreement must be filed before making an arrangement. Customers who qualify can bring two forms of identification to any of MLGW’s five community centers.

“Normally, customers only have three months to pay they bill, and the balance has to be a minimum of $500,” Carson said.

The relaxed deferred billing rules are different from MLGW’s weather-related moratorium policy. That policy states they won’t disconnect services for residential customers due to non-payment under the following conditions: The forecast wind chill factor will be 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below freezing for 24 hours or longer. The forecast heat index will be 100 degrees Fahrenheit or above at any time during a 24-hour period. The forecast heat index will be 95 degrees Fahrenheit or above at any time in a 24-hour period for customers 60 years or older, physically challenged, or customers dependent on life-support.

“We do this every year when the weather gets extremely cold or extremely hot,” Carson said. “We do this to help customers avoid having their services disconnected for non-payment. When the weather gets extreme, we focus on not cutting services off.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

MATA President Won’t Give Start Date for Trolley System

CREDIT: Joshua Cannon

The good, the bad, and the confusing: That seemed to be Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) President Ron Garrison’s theme when he provided new details — but no start date — on the progress of the trolley system’s rehabilitation.

“It’s all about telling the truth,” Garrison said at a trolley update meeting last week at Leadership Memphis. “It’s not easy work. There’s no way to do it any faster while doing it safely. Everything we’re doing will make it so that we are the standard for the rest of the country. That’s the standard the Federal Transit Administration is holding us to, and that’s a very good thing. When you get on the trolleys, you’ll be safe.”

Since two fires on the Madison Line shut the trolley system down in June 2014, MATA has taken steps to implement an updated system. Funding shortfalls, however, and a lack of experienced workers have stalled the process. But, as MATA enters a six-phase plan that will result in 11 certified trolleys being back on line, the transit authority might almost be on track.

Joshua Cannon

Ron Garrison

Garrison, additional MATA representatives, and Memphis congressman Steve Cohen recently met with Federal Transit Administration (FTA) administrator Carolyn Flowers in Washington, D.C. MATA left the capital with $3.3 million to purchase new trolleys. The city of Memphis voted to give MATA $1 million to purchase a trolley as well.

“FTA is doing what they can to help us,” Garrison said. “They are coming here to meet with us in July. They advised me not give a start date even if I had one.”

Reluctance to announce a timeline is in part due to 181 documents that MATA must produce throughout the rehabilitation process. So far, 96 documents have been submitted, but only about 15 are completed.

“They have to go through a certified … national railroad consulting firm, of which we don’t have but need to get,” Garrison said. “Then it goes to FTA, their consultants, and their engineers. Then it goes to the Tennessee Department of Transportation, their consultants, and their engineers. Then it has to go through FTA Safety in Washington D.C., their staff, and their two consultants … Then we have to do it again, it goes out again, it comes back to us again, and we have to finalize it through a safety certification committee.”

Much of the trolley rehabilitation will happen in-house, Garrison said. The trolleys will receive outward-facing doors, new pantographs that will reduce the risk of fires, fireproof insulation, and a safer, low-voltage wiring system. Memphis will be the first in the country to move their entire system to low-voltage wiring, Garrison said.

“Right now, we have two trolleys that have been rehabilitated,” Garrison said. “We’re taking every single aspect of these trolleys and making them like new. From here on out, it would be nearly impossible for anything like what happened to happen in the future. What we’re putting in place will probably be the safest in the country.”

Rehabilitating the trolley’s trucks, which carry the cars along the tracks, is costly. MATA sent eight trucks to be rebuilt off-site, each costing about $47,000. The overall rehabilitation goes hand-in-hand with restructuring the standards of the trolley system. Garrison said MATA’s maintenance staff are being retrained and certified.

At the beginning of each month, MATA will post progress reports to their website until the last document is complete. The transit authority will then perform a four- to eight-week simulated service to ensure the trolleys are safe.

“I came to Memphis to fix this because I believe it’s the right thing to do,” Garrison said. “Memphis has been in my heart since I started coming here in the ’60s. I have a photo of my daughter, who just turned 17 years old, when she was 2 years old on the trolley when Peabody Place was still running. It might be providence.”

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News News Blog

MATA, MPO Create Survey To Improve Bus Stop Standards

The Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (Memphis MPO) and the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) have partnered to improve the quality of bus stops throughout the city.

Complaints pertaining to bus stop standards prompted the organizations to create a survey. The survey will close on July 31. MPO and MATA will assess the answers and form a new set of guidelines to make the bus stops more comfortable and accessible for citizens. 

Take the survey here. 

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News The Fly-By

MATA Board to Consider Service Changes

Following an announcement from Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) CEO Ron Garrison that the city’s bus system could collapse without additional funding, the transit authority will vote on various service changes as MATA prepares for an upcoming fiscal year looming with uncertainty.

“We are mostly concerned with the future,” said Sammie Hunter, the co-chair of the Memphis Bus Riders Union. “This is nothing compared to what we might face in July if MATA does not receive the funding request they made to the city. People need access to the whole city to have better options and improve their situation.”

Three timing changes, six service changes, eight routing changes, the removal of the President’s Island route (which carried less than five riders for all of February), and five new routes are tucked away in MATA’s proposed changes. MATA’s board will vote on the changes on March 21st, and, if approved, the changes will go into effect on May 1st.

The changes are a cost-neutral plan to address Memphians’ concerns about on-time performance and bus connections while MATA awaits Mayor Jim Strickland’s budget proposal in April.

“Additional funding would negate the need to cut bus service in July 2017,” Garrison said. “Instead, MATA will be able to improve on-time performance and make service more reliable.”

Garrison has been vocal about MATA’s need for increased capital funding, as they have relied on capital dollars to satisfy operational needs. When the new fiscal year begins on July 1st, Garrison said MATA would need an increase of $7 million for the operating budget and $5 million in capital funding.

“Not only are we way underfunded, but we have buses that should have been retired years ago — probably to the tune of about 60 buses,” Garrison said. “Some of them have over 700,000 miles. We had to borrow money from the city twice last year and bridge funding we had to pay back just to make payroll.”

The bus rider’s union’s worries center around route cuts and inadequate shelters at the new transfer locations, Hunter said. One proposal would make the Frayser Plaza Shopping Center a major connection point. Hawkins Mill Route 18, a new feeder route, would replace the north end loop on Crosstown Route 42, which has the second highest ridership, according to Hunter.

“Without increasing service and building adequate shelters at these new transfer locations, folks will be waiting for their transfers out in the elements,” Hunter said. “Those who can only afford a one way pass will be forced to pay twice as much as they normally pay per day or walk the rest of the way.”

MATA touts 9.3 million passenger trips per year and currently operates 109 buses. Justin Workman, a 31-year-old food industry worker, has relied on the bus system since the age of 18. Scheduling a trip across town is often unpredictable, Workman said.

“The routing and scheduling make it nearly impossible to rely on it as a sole means of transportation,” Workman said. “Try to take a bus to Wolfchase Galleria from downtown or Midtown — I hope you have the entire day.”

The bus system could see a few positive changes by the end of year with MATA’s Short Range Transit Plan, which was announced last week. It would streamline routes, add express service, and make the system easier to navigate and understand, and they say those changes can be made without significantly increasing operating costs.

But, overall, MATA’s service will abate or improve based on the city budget when the clock restarts this fiscal year, Hunter said. Solutions, such as having Shelby County chip in, he says, need to be addressed.

“The city has got to look at its budget with compassion for the working class people,” Hunter said. “No amount of police or downtown development will solve the problems we have. We can start by allocating the funds to MATA that it needs to make it through this fiscal year without more cuts. Then we can look at long-term solutions.”