Former MATA leadership misled riders by publishing bus schedules with routes they knew would go unfulfilled, the transit authority’s interim leader revealed during a board meeting Friday, March 7.
Thousands of riders were left waiting hours, or hopelessly, as an average of 20% of scheduled routes went unmet for nearly a year. An additional 9% of routes were not offered due to expected shortcomings.
“Anecdotally, we’ve heard from our customers: ‘My bus doesn’t show up. I’ve had to wait an hour. I’ve had to wait two hours,’” said interim MATA CEO John Lewis. “And we’ve heard from leadership: ‘Well, we had a bus breakdown. We’ve been missing parts. We’ve had operators not show up.’ Those vehicles were never intended to show up, and it was deliberately designed that way.”
The issue lasted from April 2024 through January 2025. The timeline appears to line up with the tenure of former interim CEO Bacarra Mauldin, who was appointed after the retirement of former CEO Gary Rosenfeld.
Lewis is a principal for Tampa-based Transpro Consulting. The current board voted to hire the consultants on an interim basis in January. Last year, they performed an audit of MATA after a $60 million budget deficit was discovered.
City of Memphis Mayor Paul Young appointed a new board in October, rejecting a previous proposal to cut routes. All route changes require board approval.
“We could find no action by the previous board on any of this, and we went back a year and a half,” said Lewis. “You certainly didn’t take action on the February cuts.”
Mauldin was suspended from her current position as chief of staff on Thursday, March 6. Lewis confirmed to the board that a disciplinary action is in the works.
“I’ll make it short and sweet, absolutely,” replied Lewis. “And we’ll be making recommendations to you as we finish out that investigation.”
The root cause of the issue was the transit authority’s operator pick system, which allows drivers to select routes based on seniority. This system allowed less desirable routes to remain unscheduled.
Known by interim leadership, the remaining 9% of shortfalls were attributed to breakdowns, lack of spare buses or parts and employee absences. Lewis also pointed to needed improvements, including paying vendors, training mechanics and hiring backup drivers.
“Unfortunately, that was a pipe dream,” said Lewis. “Because the schedule that was actually being delivered out there was actually something significantly less.”
The cumulative effect of the unfulfilled routes and expected failures was totaled in a month-by-month spreadsheet, revealing 4,670 “missed trips” in the month of September. Only 18,569 of the month’s 23,238 scheduled routes were offered. The remainder of the year saw similar results.
“I’m mad. I’m upset. I’m mad as hell after hearing this,” declared MATA board member Cynthia Bailey. “So all this time, they were violating and had the customers acting as if it was their fault … So they were giving false information to the customers. I’m mad as hell.”
In addition to false schedules, MATA’s woes extend to financial mismanagement. Another unnamed executive was also suspended March 6 for misuse of a company credit card.
A red flag was raised when $848,000 in discretionary spending showed up on the card’s account. Much of the money was spent on a Grizzlies sponsorship, but $144,000 of the total included non-essentials, such as $30,000 for promotional items and branded merchandise, $10,000 for party rentals, $10,000 to Amazon, $8,000 on event tickets and $7,000 at Sam’s Club, to name a few.
