The Washington Post reported on Friday Metro Board Chairman Gladys W. Mack’s public apology to MetroAccess Riders. The Post noted that the apology came shortly after the Board heard from one MetroAccess rider, whose driver had gotten lost getting to the Board meeting to begin with.
The story highlights once more that the system seems to be too reliant on the technology, with no initiative allowed by the drivers (or the riders) when it comes to trip planning and implementation. We do note however with anticipation the Post’s reporting of comments made by the new Interim General Manager, Mr Dan Tangherlini:
After the meeting, he said he wanted to look into ways to provide better and “less rigid” ways of giving directions to drivers.
Whilst we are aware that there were a good number of cases in the past where a lack of oversight and auditing of MetroAccess trips resulted in abuses of the system, we wonder if WMATA’s insistance MetroAccess use the technology without deviation is causing more problems than any past abuses ever did.
The drivers are the operators, and as such are the best equipped to use their initiative and best judgement on how to fulfil a trip, moreso than any computer system can do. A computer does not adjust for traffic, weather, or anything else other than the routes in its database. Removing the “human” component from the entire system, as the current policies seem to do, is unwise and counter-productive. The computer systems are a tool, and can be a valuable tool at that – but they are still simply a tool, not the answer.
In Other Post News
In Letters To The Editor, WMATA responded to the Post’s February 10th editorial entitled “Metro Cruelty“, and in part said:
The editorial also said that “blind passengers and others waiting inside buildings do not know if a vehicle has arrived” to pick them up. Not so. Shortly after MV Transportation began providing service, we developed a program that allows the MetroAccess driver to press a switch that triggers an automated call to the customer letting the person know that MetroAccess has arrived.
We wanted to clarify this statement, because “Shortly after MV Transportation” was actually ~ two weeks, during which time WMATA insisted that such notification was simply riders demanding “door to door service”. At the time the editorial was printed, the telephone system had only been in service (according to WMATA’s own press releases) for 2 days.
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