The University of Memphis has received a $500,000 grant from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) to study transit solutions for BlueOval City and other rural job anchors.
U of M's Sabya Mishra, Ph.D., professor of civil engineering and director of the Center for Transportation Innovations in Education and Research (C-TIER), is leading the study.
He will be joined by researchers at Vanderbilt University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) and Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Agency (CARTA) are also part of the transit study group.
Together, they look to create a multimodal transit plan to get people from urban centers to rural plants, like Ford Motor Co.'s BlueOval City or Volkswagen Group of America's plant in Chattanooga.
Identifying challenges
Mishra told MBJ that as auto manufacturers move to the South with massive projects, they often pick more rural areas away from city centers to allow for sizable facilities. The sprawling BlueOval City in rural Haywood County is home to half a dozen companies and production facilities.
"Our fundamental question is with those locations, and BlueOval City is one example, how will we make transportation accessible to people who either do not have access to private transportation, do not own vehicles, or cannot drive? How can people still make it to such remote locations without any kind of constraints of owning a vehicle,'" he said.
Mishra said the transit study is looking at ways that can be implemented in a sustainable and equitable way. The group has ruled out trains and fixed-line buses, both because the infrastructure is difficult to build and ridership might not justify it.
Another challenge in West Tennessee is that Ford isn't online at BlueOval City yet. It can be hard to test a concept for a project that's not done. At BlueOval City, in addition to Ford and existing suppliers locating there, not every supplier has been announced, nor has the total scale of the supplier facilities.
A model from Chattanooga
That is where UT Chattanooga, UT Knoxville, and Vanderbilt come in. Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga opened over a decade ago and can provide a way to test transit strategies.
"The goal is a statewide effort so we can improve accessibility to jobs. And the goal is, how can we leverage public transportation, but complement it with other ways of transportation?" said Mina Sartipi, Ph.D., who is the director of UT Chattanooga's Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP) and director of that university's Research Institute.
Overall, the intent is to create a framework to get people to large projects outside urban cores.
"The Chattanooga part would be focused on doing surveys, understanding the demand and the need," Sartipi said. "Then, these are the available assets, like parking or CARTA fixed route services, how can we supplement that?"
The TNECD grant won't be enough to fully implement ideas, but it sets the stage for a playbook to be made when the time comes. The group also plans to simulate travel to observe the potential impacts.
"Our first objective of this work is to create what we call multimodal service zones and plan the routes and schedule them properly," Mishra said. "This all has to be done virtually."
The lessons tested in Chattanooga can then be simulated and tested out and then be utilized when Ford starts to come online at BlueOval City.
"These are the two big [original equipment manufacturers] OEMs that what we have [in Tennessee]," Mishra said. "Volkswagen is also producing their battery ID.4 [electric SUV] over there [in Chattanooga]. … We hypothesize that the workers who work in such type of facilities have some common characteristics, so we can find some similarities in terms of travel patterns, and then come up with multimodal solutions accordingly."
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