Why would the new MATA Trustees in Walter Person and Roderick Holmes not be transparent with MATA’s historical records? Neither Person or Holmes  were around when the MATA ripoff was occurring. Doesn’t seem like they would have anything to lose by being transparent.

At the same time, a public records request, regarding trolley inventory, was recently denied by MATA. The specifics of that request will be taken up later in this blog. But based on the public money spent, there should be no reason that a steel railed trolley is not running in Downtown Memphis.

Little Rock Arkansas has a trolley Blue Line up and running and capitally spent much less than Memphis from 2019-24. Some of Little Rock’s trolley network is under construction but the Blue Line has fare free pick up stops every 20 minutes.

With the highest ridership of any MATA route, the shutdown of the Memphis Downtown trolley to end all trolley service was an alarming development. Where was the advocacy from the Downtown Memphis Commission and Innovate Memphis? Both entities are publicly subsidized to advocate for downtown.

Per the Federal Transit Database, from 2019-24 Little Rock capitally spent $2,426,516 and Memphis spent $11,676,479 on trollies. Memphis spent $4,857,587 on trolley passenger vehicles, while Little Rock spent $809,570. Where are the Memphis trollies?!?!

The former is not to mention that Memphis spent $439,650 on “other” trolley related vehicles. In FY24 alone, Memphis spent $1,650,580 on trolley passenger vehicles and $201,050 on “other” trolley related vehicles. What’s up with that?

To give another comparison, New Orleans with 23 operating trollies, from 2019-24 capitally spent $12.1M and Memphis with 4 operating cars spent $11.7M. And no trollies are running in Memphis. WOW !

And Memphis has more than the declared 4 operating trolley cars after acquiring several from Charlotte and California. So where are all the trollies? Councilman Edmund Ford, Transporatation Council Committee Chair, should lead a forensic audit around trolley inventory, starting with the below questions that MATA refused to answer via public records request.

Here are the questions:

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.

Ford should also lead the Council with a physical inspection of all trolley inventory. Were trollies ripped off somehow by the elitist punk families of Memphis? Don't think a legislative body alone cannot lead a forensic audit. They can and should at times!

MATA’s response to the above FOIA was as follows: “We are unable to comply with your requests for records because it does not comply with Tenn. Code Ann. Sec. 10-7-503(a)(4) by not identifying specific records and requiring our records custodian to sort through files or compile information into a new record.”

Where are the Tollies?