WMATA has put a news article on its site at http://www.wmata.com/about/met_news/story.cfm?ID=558 entitled “MetroAccess makes additional changes to improve service”.
It’s definately interesting reading, and there are some questions that can be raised in response, but before going into those, this part seems to be WMATA shooting themselves in the foot. In the news release, WMATA says:
A new on-line service has been established that allows MetroAccess customers to log on and check their personal and trip data to help ensure greater accuracy. MetroAccess patrons can enter their personal and trip data themselves with the new easy-to-use data screen at http://www.wmata.com/metroaccess/paratransit_update_form.cfm. This process of updating customer information is seeing immediate improvements in service for those riders who are providing updated data.
Which is all well and good, except … the link that points to gives you a page that simply says:
Update your Metro Access information in our database
You may make your change requests via the MetroAccess Reservations Department at 301-562-5360, Option 1 or 301-588-7535 (TTY).
So their much-vaunted online form to correct information tells you to call MetroAccess to have it changed.
Now you could concievably make the claim that this was simply a case of the news release going up before the form did, but that beggars the question:
This process of updating customer information is seeing immediate improvements in service for those riders who are providing updated data.
How on earth is this process of updating customer information seeing immediate improvements when it doesn’t actually exist yet? Wishful thinking perhaps? Even if WMATA gets that form page working after reading this, it still cannot reconcile how a system that doesn’t exist yet is seeing (current tense) improvements.
As for the rest of the news release, there’s a few questions can be raised.
The previous MetroAccess contractor frequently carried customers one per vehicle, much like a taxi service, because that company was paid by the trip and thus did not have any incentive to provide shared trips.
They also had no incentive to provide a service because half-way through the contract they were able to negotiate no longer being penalized for confirmed complaints. Does WMATA have any penalties on MV Transportation for valid complaints levelled against the service, or for failing to maintain a minimum level of performance?
MV Transportation is working to provide trips for customers that won’t take longer than one and a half times the length of the same trip taken by Metrobus or Metrorail. So a 60 minute trip by bus shouldn’t take longer than 90 minutes by MetroAccess. This federally accepted practice is required by Metro.
There are riders being left on transports while they make shorter trips after picking them up for 2 or three hours. Is WMATA monitoring the amount of time riders are on the transports?
using a cell phone while driving is illegal in the District of Columbia and Metro does not permit its bus operators to use cell phones regardless of the jurisdiction in which they drive
Nextels seem to be classified as radios instead of cell phones then? Dispatch will routinely call drivers on Nextel while they’re in motion.
Now we come to a more disturbing set of observations:
Wednesday’s on-time performance of the federally required curb-to-curb paratransit service
and
Our MetroAccess service is meeting federal requirements
and
Plans are in place for MetroAccess riders to receive a copy of the MetroAccess Rider’s Guide in the mail to ensure that they know the guidelines for the service as required under the ADA and clarifies what customers can expect.
That’s a lot of references to the fact that WMATA is required by law to provide this service. The last one is troubling, however, since it indicates that WMATA intends to provide simply what the law requires of them. That does raise the question whether or not regular riders only get the service the law requires they be provided?
If the bare minimum level of service is what we can “expect”, then we would hope that any “goodies” regular riders receive are curtailed and discontinued. We want equality, not the bare minimum. Statements such as the ones WMATA has been making since MV Transportation took over make it quite obvious that they’re only going to meet the requirements the law states they must meet, leaving the riders with the overall impression because of such comments of “Consider yourselves lucky, we’ll do what the law says and nothing more.”
It’s only a short step to hear the unspoken subtext behind that: “If we weren’t required to provide it by law, we wouldn’t provide even that.”
The minimum required by law is not equality. Hiding behind the minimum required by law and considering that to be “good enough” does however let us know our value, as a community, as customers.
A dialysis center coordinator came on board last week to establish a hot line for dialysis patients and others with emergency transportation needs, and contacted all regional dialysis centers to ensure that MV is aware of all subscription trips which they know about.
MV Transportation is supposed to be experienced. WMATA definately has experience. Why has it taken so long for such a coordinator to be appointed? Why are WMATA and MV Transportation still struggling to play catch-up with the needs of the ridership?
Metro and MV Transportation officials are working to establish an automated telephone calling alert service that will place an automated call to a rider to let that individual know when the MetroAccess vehicle is approaching the pick-up location.
Has WMATA or MV Transportation included an opt-out for such a system? Is such a system going to be compatible with the Melard Technologies MDTs in the old fleet, or just the Ranger MDTs in the new vehicles? If not compatible with the Melard MDTs, what plans are there to bypass the fail-point of the system?
Personally made telephone calls to people with visual impairments to let them know that their ride is approaching.
Drivers going to the door to alert visually impaired customers that they have arrived.
In inclement weather, will there be provision to extend the same courtesy to all riders, so they can stay indoors where it is warm and dry until their ride arrives, or will they be required to wait for 30 minutes (or longer) in the cold and wet?
What provision will be made for those who have weather-sensitive medical conditions, such as those who have Multiple Sclerosis for whom prolonged exposure to hot weather is A Bad Thing™?
Since not everyone gets picked up right next to their office/work/home telephone, how does MetroAccess plan on notifying riders their ride will be late if they’re required to wait by the curb? Many riders are afraid to leave their pick-up point to call and ascertain the whereabouts of the transport that’s supposed to pick them up when it’s late, for fear it will show as they’re on the phone and they’ll be classed as a “no-show” (and worse, be stranded again). That the transport is supposed to wait for 10 minutes is scant comfort when you have to spend 15 minutes on hold with the call center.
(This also contributes to the metrics on complaints - few riders even bother to register complaints any more, since we’ve gone for so long with complaints being brushed off and ignored.)
More pointedly, if you can provide this “service” for the visually impaired, why not simply make it available to all the riders instead, to cover all the bases?
Why is MetroAccess policy when the driver fails to make a pickup to have the driver complete the manifest and then return to try to make the pick-up again several hours later? Why are the riders penalized for the failure of the system and forced to be stranded, often in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? Does MetroAccess plan on implementing a fall-back add-on system to try to cover such eventualities?
One thing strikes me as being an ever-present intimation in WMATA and MV Transportation’s comments to date, that somehow the fact they’re legally required to provide this service is an indication that we’re getting something for nothing. We aren’t - we’re paying customers just like any other riders.
Why is it so difficult for WMATA and MV Transportation to accept this, and to treat us as such? Instead, we’re supposed to accept being treated like cattle - except cattle have the FDA watching over their welfare, so they have it better than we do.
We would direct these questions direct to Christian Kent, but again requests for an interview have been outright ignored. Whilst we realize that WMATA and MV Transportation are unlikely to be willing to lend any sort of “legitimacy” to this site by granting such an interview, we would point out that ignoring the riders, especially ones trying to work to help get the system up to speed, speaks volumes about where you see your “customers”.
You never know, the database migration might never have been a problem if the warnings that were given to WMATA in november 2005 had been given any attention.
