Wharton, MATA, and Inequality-Does He Actually Care? Maybe if Dogs Rode Buses.

The city is abuzz about MATA cuts and the recent release of studies about inequality. Atlanta was the big headline with the 4% chance of in the bottom 20 percentile income bracket moving up to the top 20 percentile income bracket during their lifetime. In Memphis, there is a 2.6% chance of a person doing that. Memphis didn't get to be the poorest city in America by having high levels of social mobility. We like our poverty multi-generational. This is what 2.6% looks like on a map. The physical distance is small but socio-economic terms, it is the Grand-Fucking-Canyon.

It is widely understood that the simplest and perhaps most important thing to alleviate poverty is getting the poor to economic opportunity. This is why MATA is SO IMPORTANT. To say MATA's bus routes are crazy is to insult the crazy. Communities need to get to these basics: Jobs, Food, and Schools. I list food because it is a no brainer. Schools are listed just because of efficiency. The old City School System would spend a fortune on buses. MATA needs bus riders. Millions could have been saved by the school system by having middle and high school kids take MATA buses to school. MATA could have increased ridership and got another revenue stream. Chocolate & Peanut butter people. It isn't that complicated. Now look at this map of all these things combined.

I highlighted a few bus routes to show how insane the system is. Almost all the bus routes go downtown. WTF?! It is a giant bowl of spaghetti. Memphis is a collection of suburbs, yet to get around within your own area is difficult to say the least. Can someone say hub & spoke. Look at the commute times for work. Some of the wealthiest areas of town have the lowest commute times and the poorest have the longest. Navigating a bowl of spaghetti doesn't help you get to economic opportunity.

I have written a lot about various subjects mostly dealing with inequality. Here are a few: Median age , Employment , educational attainment , police & fire budgets , bookings vs voting , political districts, foreclosures, etc. What I have been trying to show is that the inequality and poverty is a feature, not bug in the system here. When AC ran for mayor he talked about all these reforms and one of those areas of reform was MATA. He could have changed the board and leveraging logistical resources like FedEx in those first 2 years. Then when he got re-elected in a landslide, he could have had things in place to make MATA a quality public transportation system. That hasn't happened. The last thing Memphis needed, especially in these difficult times, was a weak, ineffective mayor with no vision for anything other than public relations. Well, that's what we got. Now he's a lame duck, despised in the black community and not much respected in the white community. But he doesn't deserve all the blame. The city council of Memphis is an uninspiring lot as well, occupied with many posturers looking towards future mayoral and congressional runs. A city where the biggest problem is poverty, our political establishment gives away tax revenue via PILOTS, cuts vital services, doesn't enact any reforms to improve social/economic advancement, and pushes for privatization. Memphis has been operating under the premise of "keeping the shit at shoe level" for a really long time. That isn't working any longer. Big changes have to happen. Unfortunately, I don't think the mayor and council believe things can change or don't want to shake up the system. It makes you wonder if the mayor and council say to themselves "Why reform MATA if there is no opportunity for people anyway?" Perhaps if dogs rode the buses, the political establishment would care.