2/22 jts MATA proposals MATA unveils light rail proposal, announces new bus lines Ambitious train project hinges on federal money By JAMES SNYDER The Daily News Memphis could boast a light rail network linking the citys corners in the coming decade given the funds and community support, city and Memphis Area Transit Authority officials announced Wednesday. During a morning press conference at city hall, MATA president William Hudson unveiled plans for five new bus routes and an extended route into northwest and southwest Shelby County. Slated to begin in early March, the new routes run to Millington, Collierville, Hickory Hill, Raleigh, Bartlett and the Nike distribution center on Winchester. The extended 85 route will reach Horton Gardens in Northaven. MATA designed the routes in cooperation with local companies and the outlying municipalities. Some suburban firms expressed concern that a lack of public transportation was keeping them from tapping skilled labor outside their area, Hudson said. Collierville Mayor Herman Cox Jr., flanking Hudson with the mayors of Germantown and Bartlett, was direct about what the new routes represented for the town. "Were choking to death on Poplar Avenue," he said. "Increased bus service to us will be a blessing in disguise. We need all the help we can get." Memphis Mayor W. W. Herenton said that by 2010, six of every seven jobs will exist outside the expressway loop. That, combined with new suburban centers and the doubling of cars along metropolitan corridors between 1980 and 1990, requires the expansion of regional public transportation, he said. MATA currently has $1.25 million earmarked for the study and engineering of a light rail route connecting Downtown to Cleveland Avenue at the medical center, Hudson said. Construction of the medical center stretch could cost as much as $31 million and remains contingent on funding from the U.S. Congress. Hudson said MATA is working with the Memphis congressional delegation to secure funding and is planning a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. MATA receives 80 percent of its project funds from the federal government. But the Federal Transit Administration recently cut MATAs funding by $2 million, an 11 percent cut for fiscal year 1995 and a 44 percent cut for fiscal year 1996. The medical center loop would be the first line of a light rail network reaching West Memphis, Ark., North Mississippi, Memphis International Airport, the University of Memphis and Collierville. Following recommendations made by the mayors Rail Transit Task Force two years ago, which studied the technical and funding feasibility of light rail in Memphis, the rail proposal joins other projects on the books for MATA, including new bus transfer centers, a riverfront loop for the trolley and a north-end terminal linking cars, city buses and the trolley. In April, construction will begin on an $18 million intermodal hub at a rejuvenated Central Station connecting cars, city and regional buses, the trolley and passenger trains