Each morning Steve Owens leaves his home in West Memphis and boards a bus for Memphis. In the evenings, he’s back on the bus heading to Arkansas. …Offering free bus service wasn’t a popular idea, said West Memphis Mayor Bill Johnson. “We were criticized. They said it wouldn’t be utilized, it wasn’t necessary and people wouldn’t ride it,” Johnson said. “We average over 20,000 (riders) a month.” …Owens and his fiancee, Sabrina Blyler, also use the free MATA bus in West Memphis. She goes to general education diploma classes and doctor appointments on the bus, and they both run errands and go grocery shopping using the service. The couple has a car, but it stopped running about a month ago, Owens said. “I haven’t even bothered to try to fix it because we can do everything off the bus,” he said. CommercialAppealNews