MATA secretly cut bus routes. Now, there’s a plan to build back that service.

Memphis Area Transit Authority riders have long said that buses don’t come on time and sometimes don’t show up at all. 

Their complaints were validated last month, when MATA’s interim leadership revealed that the previous leadership had made secret route cuts starting in April 2024 without board approval. The cut trips, which impacted most routes, stayed on the schedule for months, deliberately misleading the public.

Now, the new board and consulting firm TransPro have a plan, already approved by the board, to gradually bring back the missing trips with the goal of fully restoring service to pre-cuts levels by July.

The heart of the plan is getting more buses back on the roads. MATA officials have said for years that they didn’t have enough buses to meet the demands of the published schedule. That likely was a main driver behind the secret cuts, which were made by removing routes from the internal system drivers use to choose which routes to drive. 

In one example, Route 42 had a public schedule that required seven buses. But, prior MATA leadership removed three of those buses from the system, preventing drivers from selecting them. 

MATA has already started the process of repairing and buying more buses, and plans to get more on the street as soon as possible, said David Johnson, MATA’s interim chief development officer and a senior project leader with TransPro.

When a bus becomes available, it will be added to one of 10 routes that have been identified as top priorities. So far, five buses have been repaired and added back to the schedule, while 13 still need repairs. MATA needs all of those buses and more drivers to restore the missing weekday trips for the following key routes, in order of priority: 

When a bus is added to a route, that addition will be announced to the public, but not added to the published schedule, Johnson said, since it usually takes several months to do a full schedule change. MATA is still working on a plan to announce those additions to the public. 

Riders should notice shorter wait times between buses, and other improvements like more early morning and late night trips, as service is restored, officials said.

In July, MATA plans to publish a fully updated schedule, formally reinstating all trips that were secretly removed by prior leadership. That process would include public outreach, board approval and a Title VI analysis to ensure the changes don’t discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin. 

While MATA is confident that its plan is feasible, Johnson stressed that needing to hire more bus drivers could lead to missing the July goal.

TransPro leadership told MATA officials they also expect to purchase another 25 used buses from other transit agencies, drastically increasing the size of the fleet. That will allow for added service and also put the agency on a better bus replacement schedule for future years. 

The public first learned of the secret route cuts during a March 7 committee meeting where TransPro officials told the board that 20% of planned trips couldn’t be completed because no drivers were scheduled. Another 9% of trips were missed for unrelated reasons such as bus breakdowns.

“Our analysis showed that this wasn’t a one-time occurrence, but rather was a deliberate decision made by prior management to mask those service cuts from the public,” said John Lewis, Interim CEO of MATA and a principal at TransPro.  

Commissioner Cynthia Bailey, also a co-chair of the Memphis Bus Riders Union, said the agency can’t go back to fix job losses and other issues that stemmed from buses not showing up as scheduled, but that today riders are noticing more buses out on the streets.

She’d give the system a B+ today, she said, “and that is a big change from a D to an F under the previous (leadership).” 

Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at [email protected]

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