RIDE ALONG:

Bus service aims to lure employers

MATA hopes jobs fill seats on new Nonconnah Corp. Center route.

MATA on Monday started a new bus route to help lure prospective employers to Nonconnah Corporate Center near Memphis International Airport.

Over the past two years, the lack of bus service cost the office park three potential new tenants who would have inhabited about 25,000 square feet total, said Phil Dagastino Jr., senior vice president for Commercial Advisors.

Although the buses started rolling Monday into the office park, which once contained the headquarters of FedEx Corp., ridership was thin.

Ninety minutes into its new loop, MATA’s bus No. 3021 again pulled out of Airways Transit Center at 8:05 a.m. Monday and made a 16-minute pass through the nearby Nonconnah Corporate Center. Nobody got aboard, but current demand is not the driving force in starting the route.

“The service was requested by Nonconnah’s management, which sees transit as an important tool to attract and retain tenants,” states a release from Memphis Area Transit Authority. “This public-private experiment in promoting transit will support job development, employee satisfaction and environmental responsibility.’’

By 4 p.m. Monday, 14 riders used the new bus route, MATA spokesman Alison Burton said in an email. “We expect more riders every day,’’ she said.

The Memphis City Council approved $120,000 for MATA for the route. Also, businesses along the route are purchasing from MATA thousands of dollars worth of bus passes to provide to employees.

One of the prospective tenants

who earlier bypassed Nonconnah serves the blind and visually impaired, for whom public transit is especially important, Dagastino said. Another was a staffing agency and a third was a health care service provider, he said.

Students attending two for-profit schools in the Nonconnah area, Vatterott Career College and Remington College, would benefit from public transportation, he said. Southwest Tennessee Community College just closed its satellite campus in the area.

City Councilman and mayoral candidate Harold Collins said he believes MATA officials, when they cut the route a few years ago, did not understand nearly 2,300 people work or attend school in and around Nonconnah Corporate Center.

“It’s a classic, in my opinion, underestimation of the potential to use MATA to provide transportation to the people who need it most,” Collins said.

“And so there were meetings held between the Nonconnah business district leadership, the entity that manages the property and myself with MATA to figure out a way to get them back to the complex.’’

The route starts at Airways Transit Center, at the corner of Airways and Brooks, and loops along Nonconnah into the office park.