The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Metro Board has finally approved MV Transportation’s request, made at the start of the contract, for over $1 Million in additional funds. This request, to outfit legacy vehicles remaining in the fleet from the Logisticare days, had been originally rejected by the Board.
Whilst WMATA tries to spin this into the Board making positive moves to try to resolve the issues facing MetroAccess, it’s more accurately Metro having to once more backtrack on itself, and this decision would have been better served if WMATA had listened to the experience of the contractors it had hired to operate the service back in January.
In light of the reasoning for the Board changing its mind, and the reasons given, it seems clear that the original decision to deny these funds was made placing budgetary criteria over operational ones, and the Metro Board should acknowledge that it made a mistake in January.
The Post article also mentions that Mr Dan Tangherlini, the Interim General Manager of WMATA states that Metro staffers are beginning to audit MV Transportation’s preliminary statistics, and points out that “Many riders have complained that MV’s statistics do not reflect reality.”
This might not be entirely accurate. MV Transportation doesn’t provide statistics, WMATA does through their website and other avenues. WMATA seems to have declined to update their website statistics since March 2nd, around the same time DC ParaTransit Info began analyzing and raising deep concerns over the statistics WMATA was making public.
Given that WMATA is an interested party, and given that WMATA has been caught being less-than-accurate with it’s published statistics, we do not believe that WMATA should be auditing MV’s figures, rather than an independant organization be brought in.
Allowing WMATA to be in charge of auditing the statistics puts them in the position where they can continue to attempt to shift the blame for the failures of the MetroAccess service on to MV Transportation. Whilst MV Transportation would be responsible for those failures on an operational level, we feel that WMATA’s statutory obligations and responsibilities should not continue to be shunted onto the contractor - WMATA is responsible for providing the service, if the service fails to be provisioned it is WMATA’s responsibility.
It’s time to break out of playing the DC Blame Game, and for those responsible to finally accept responsibility, shedding the “but it was …” approach. The spin with regards to this additional funding, omitting that it is a reversal and trying to make it sound like a pro-active response to the issues MetroAccess faces, is the latest example. It doesn’t matter who is at fault, what matters is fixing it.
WMATA needs to stop playing “cover your ass”, while ours are left sitting out in the freezing cold for six hours.
