WMATA announced on their web site today the creation of a “Critical Trip Management Team”. The purpose of this Team, according to the press release, is to “address the number of missed/extremely late trips, reduce complaints from these incidents, to ensure there are no repeat occurrences, and to reach out to riders who have concerns about MetroAccess.”
The press release states that “All riders experiencing missed or extremely late trips will be contacted directly”, but WMATA has still yet to define publically what constitutes an “extremely late” trip, by their standards at least.
The press release states:
Street supervisors are also being dispatched to photograph troublesome locations
This we heard about when we visited MetroAccess’ Silver Springs Operations Center on Monday February 20th, when asking about a rider whose driver had become lost whilst taking her to WMATA’s board meeting recently. As DC ParaTransit Info understands it, MetroAccess is obtaining pictures of landmarks and difficult-to-identify locations to make available to dispatch and call-center staff, to be used to describe more fully such places to drivers to aid in navigation.
We note with gratitude that this latest press release is absent the more common statements by WMATA about the validity of the rider complaints, and the mention of the legal requirement to provide ParaTransit services, and hope that this is a positive sign towards progress with riders, WMATA, and MV working together to resolve the issues surrounding MetroAccess.
Whilst this press release looks good on the surface, and might indeed be a sign that things are looking up, we do however have to question the timing of the press release, coming a day before DC Councilmember Schwartz is due to hear testimony on the state of MetroAccess at the upcoming Budget meeting.
We have been in a similar position many times before, being told things will be resolved, but they always seem to be forgotten once the media pressure is relaxed. Whilst it is too early to tell if that will be the case once more, it will be some time before we can take on faith alone that anything will be done.
In the meantime, we continue to encourage riders to post their trip reports here, but also to follow-up with any contact and resolution from this Team they may receive. This will allow everyone to see if WMATA is living up to their promises and press releases, as well as for the community to evaluate the level of customer service being given, in order to decide if it’s worth beginning to trust the complaints system once more or not.
On the subject of transparency, we would like to note that DC ParaTransit Info was invited separately by MV Transportation and Mr Christian T. Kent, the Director of MetroAccess, to tour the Silver Springs control center, and to bring along any questions we had, an invitation we took advantage of this past Monday, February 20th 2006.
We apologize for not yet having posted on our visit yet, in part the delays are because all of our questions were not only answered, they were answered with a lot of detail, and some questions that couldn’t be answered on the spot are being researched by MV so that they can forward us more answers.
DC ParaTransit Info would like to publically thank the MV staff members that gave freely of their time to answer those questions: Inez Evans – Vice President/General Manager of MV/MetroAccess service; Marsha Madrid – Exec. VP of IT; Dwight Sayer – MV Consumer Advocate; and Nikki Frenney – Director of Communications. We would also like to thank Mr Monson, CEO of MV Transportation, for granting time for additional questions “on the fly” on Tuesday 21st February 2006.
We would strongly suggest that WMATA take note of the openness with which MV treated our questions, and the level of detail they provided, and consider being as open in answering the questions only WMATA can answer that have been posted here and elsewhere. The constant silence of WMATA itself towards the ridership is one of the biggest non-operational causes of the current level of feeling towards MetroAccess service currently, and we would hope that in the spirit of the press release above WMATA is planning on changing that disasterous approach.
Are things looking up? Certainly, there has been an improvement in operational aspects of the service. However we do not feel that simply improving the numbers is sufficient reason to cheer just yet. WMATA should take advantage of this huge transition period – a new Interim Manager and a new MetroAccess contractor – and consider making changes with regards to its entire outlook and policies regarding MetroAccess.
Let’s not replace the old, broken system, with a new, broken system. Let’s try and get it right this time?
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