WMATA seems to have taken on board at least one issue raised at the Advisory Committee meeting, and have added new content to their web site regarding the timing issues of that meeting raised in a previous article here. The following information has been added:
The MetroAccess subcommittee of the Elderly & Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee meets on the first Monday of every month at 4pm just prior to the meeting of the E&D committee that starts at 5:30pm. The MetroAccess subcommittee addresses issues that are specifically related to the MetroAccess service. These meetings are are open to the public, and time is devoted in each meeting for public comment on any aspect of the service. All are welcome to attend.
They missed adding it to the Advisory Committee blurb at http://wmata.com/accessibility/advocacy_policy.cfm though, but that’s an understandable oversight that we expect they’ll rectify when they become aware of it. On behalf of the ridership that relies on WMATA’s pages to advise them of such meetings, we thank WMATA for addressing the omission of this information so promptly.
There is still no sign, however, of the online information upgrade page they say can be found at http://www.wmata.com/metroaccess/paratransit_update_form.cfm, despite their press releases being written in such a way as to intimate that such a form exists and is “seeing immediate improvements”. We have yet to see this form, despite it having been touted on January 23rd (and again on January 26th) in release text such as the following:
A new on-line service has been established that allows MetroAccess customers to log on and check their personal and trip data to ensure accuracy. Patrons can enter their data themselves with the new easy-to-use data screen at http://www.wmata.com/metroaccess/paratransit_update_form.cfm.
(Source: http://wmata.com/about/MET_NEWS/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1078 & http://wmata.com/about/MET_NEWS/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1084)
This one can’t be chalked up to an oversight of content editing - They make mention of it twice and claim it’s showing benefits, when it doesn’t actually do anything more than tell people to call MetroAccess.
WMATA has also clarified the issue surrounding their metrics on the number of complaints received during the weekend, adding this text to the latest news release at http://wmata.com/about/MET_NEWS/PressReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1095:
^[snip] The customer service call center is closed on the weekends.
This is actually an interesting edit. Obviously, a call center was open during the weekend, it took 1,931 calls on Saturday 2/4/2006 and 1,819 calls on Sunday 2/5/2006. So it does seem that WMATA is only counting those complaints that are received by WMATA directly, and not any made through MetroAccess itself.
It is our belief that unless WMATA reports the sum of unique complaints received by both the WMATA Customer Service department and the MetroAccess call center, their complaints statistics are useless - Most riders are going to call MetroAccess to complain about their ride being AWOL, and those figures appear to be excluded from the statistics, based on this information.
This site addition also highlights a discontinuity in WMATA’s previous metrics regarding complaints. According to their MetroAccess daily service updates page, WMATA received 8 complaints on January 28th 2006 - a Saturday. Since they are claiming their call center doesn’t operate on weekends, we have to wonder where those 8 complaints came from.
If WMATA expects us to take their metrics at face value, then we believe WMATA should clarify the manner in which they are “reconciling” the statistics, including the question of how complaints are being counted.
