In March 2004, a lawsuit was filed against WMATA1, alleging that WMATA was failing to comply with federal laws with regards to the MetroAccess system.

Although the contractor providing MetroAccess service on behalf of WMATA changed (from LogistiCare to MV Transit) in 2006 the case continues to be in litigation.

Late last week, all MetroAccess subscribers received a “Notice of proposed class action settlement”2

At the moment, the Judge hearing the suit will be holding a “Fairness Hearing” on May 22nd 2008. This may be the last chance people have to comment or object to any part of the proposed Settlement Agreement.

The settlement agreement itself is extensive, and mentions most all of the issues that have been recurring problems with MetroAccess service in recent years. It also provides an interesting view inside the operational aspects of MetroAccess that we, as riders, may not have known about.

To avoid having to wade through pages of legalese, the “meat” of the proposed settlement is “Appendix A”, which can be found between pages 35 to 54 in the PDF on WMATA’s web site. Appendix A details WMATA’s commitments under the settlement agreement to address the issues that brought this matter to court in the first place.

Like most legal documents, the commitments WMATA will make are sometimes specific, and sometimes vague. As the cover sheet for the settlement agreement notes, this is the result of “months of negotiations”, which we think is legal speak for “wriggle as much as possible”.

With that in mind however, some of the key commitments are noted here, against the recurring complaints DC Paratransit Info has heard from the community over the years.

Door To Door

MetroAccess has long been officially a “kerb to kerb” service - the service was only concerned with getting riders from the kerb at the starting point to the kerb at the destination. This caused problems for many riders who would be assisted by a “door to door” service - the driver being able to assists, for example, a blind rider to the door of their destination itself.

In the settlement agreement, WMATA commits to:

This will be implemented by July of 2008, and will continue thereafter to be standard procedure. Delay in implementation has been due to need to receive comments from public, and need to educate riders and staff before transition.

This will include training the drivers and dispatchers in how to provide the new door to door service.

The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour is one of the more annoying and frustrating phenomena experienced by MetroAccess Riders.

Officially, WMATA practice is that a MetroAccess trip should not take more than half again as long as comparable trip time by fixed route transit (Metro Bus and Metro Rail). Most riders however have been on trips that have taken two, three, or even four or more hours before reaching their destination - The Grand Tour.

This was mentioned in the settlement agreement, as

Review excessively long trip lengths, scheduling, and routing each evening.

with WMATA committing to

Commit to review this information on a regular basis. However these reviews are not seen as necessary on a daily basis at this time.

We at DC Paratransit Info have a big problem with this point. WMATAs commitment only says they will review the issue, but they don’t even see it as “necessary” on a nightly basis. This does not appear to provide any commitment to actually do something about it, and implies the Grand Tour is a low priority from their perspective.

To be fair, a large part of the problem causing The Grand Tour is the way Trapeze, the software used to control MetroAccess operations, determines the “optimal” trip scheduling. Its priority is to make pick-ups on time, but in doing so it gives little attention to the trip times, or the destinations.

We believe this is an unfortunate result of the emphasis for on-time pickups - the statistics gathered on the system (the metrics) make “on time” the priority measure of performance, and so the software doesn’t care if the trips are excessive, as long as it can make as many pick ups in as short a time as possible.

This is one of the most common issues riders have relayed to DC Paratransit Info, and was the first one we brought to WMATA and MVs attention when we met with them at the end of March 2008. At that meeting, we noted the reason above, and were told it will be looked at.

However, this huge issue does not appear to have any commitment in the proposed legal settlement other than “periodic reviews”.

Fudging Numbers

A practice DC Paratransit Info has long believed is in place to reduce the numbers of “incomplete” trips, especially late pick-ups, seems to have been confirmed to occur (and still does) - if a trip is “incomplete” for whatever reason, the “replacement” trip is added as a “new” trip internally, allowing MetroAccess to claim it as “on time”, rather than a continuation of an “incomplete” trip.

The settlement agreement directly mentions this practice.

Closely track coding of trips. Pay special attention to trips coded as no-shows that could be missed trips. Audit MV to make sure that the prior practice of creating new trips with new scheduled times has been discontinued.

There is a related issue that we hope this commitment will address.

If a vehicle is so far behind on the schedule that it risks multiple trips on its manifest all being “late pickups”, the vehicle will “skip” one or two pickups to try to make up for lost time.

This results practically in the manifest having one or two “incomplete” trips, rather than many “late” trips.

We have seen first hand drivers make the decision to skip pickups in order to bring their manifest back into schedule again. We do not believe that this is official practice, policy, or sanctioned by either WMATA or MV, but we do feel that it’s a logical result of the pressure on drivers to perform “on time”.

We raised this issue at our last meeting with WMATA and MV, when we emphasized again that we believe this is a driver education issue in response to the “on time performance” pressure. Hopefully, driver training and changes that reduce the metrics-driven pressure on drivers will help put a stop to this “practical solution” drivers themselves have been employing for several years.

No-shows by MetroAccess

Many trips where MetroAccess has failed to arrive to make pick-up have been erroneously classified as “no shows” - claims the passenger was not at the pick-up, rather than the transport never got there. This issue is also on the list of commitments by WMATA as “Monitoring” - again, no commitment to do something other than monitor.

It may be however that we, not being lawyers, are misunderstanding the meaning of such “monitoring” commitments - it might mean “fix it when we find it’s happening”.

Staffing

There are a good number of commitments listed in relation to improving staff training, ranging from sensitivity training to training call center staff and schedulers in the use of the Trapeze software.

One recommendation we would like to see in regards to sensitivity training is a commitment (although not necessarily a “legal” one laid down in the settlement agreement) where WMATA and MV arrange to use Christine Miserandino’s “Spoon Theory“, giving a copy to every employee of MetroAccess.

The Spoon Theory has long been a favourite of ours in sensitivity training, and we would hope that WMATA and MV can contact Christine and get her permission to use this wonderful story in helping to educate MetroAccess staff in another less well-known aspect of “disability” awareness.

WMATA and MV certainly seems to accept that there is a need to better educate MetroAccess staff in its commitments across the board towards staff training, as well as commitments to increase the number of “back room” staff - schedulers, road supervisors, and “Where’s my ride” staff.

The Web

One of the things WMATA commented on frequently at the start of MVs contract to provide MetroAccess was web-based access to the reservations system. Unfortunately, as DC Paratransit Info noted at the time, this was mentioned a lot, but was “vapourware” - it didn’t exist.

Thankfully, this has changed now, as is mentioned in the settlement agreement. We believe this is a long overdue resource that is of great benefit to the riders.

MetroAccess has two web links, https://macs.mvwmata.mvtransit.com/passweb/hiwire?.a=pHome and an “Accessible Version” at https://macs.mvwmata.mvtransit.com/508/hiwire?.a=pHome.

These links allow subscribed riders to access the booking system to schedule trips, as well as cancel them. This is a huge step for those who can use the internet, streamlining the booking system enormously. For people who are concerned about “Internet security”, we note that the URLs for the booking system use “SSL” technology, as if it were an online shopping site, making it much more secure to boot.

Conclusions

All in all, we believe the settlement agreement is a huge positive result, although it has taken many years to arrive at this point. It is unfortunate that it came to the “stick” of legal action before WMATA committed to fulfilling both its obligations under the ADA, as well as “practical” obligations to provide a service that gives the disability community parity of transit options comparable to the normal fixed route service for mainstream society.

If WMATA keeps to its commitments, MetroAccess should become that resource, as well as be one of the best paratransit systems in the country. In our contacts with WMATA recently, we have already felt a change inm their attitude towards MetroAccess, no doubt helped in large part by the recent appointment of “one of our own” as the Director of MetroAccess.

As cynical as we can sometimes be, we feel confident that future issues with MetroAccess will end up more frequently boiling down to “human error” than any corporate policy by WMATA or MV. The management now in place handling ADA issues for WMATA genuinely seems to have a passion for ensuring we, the disability community, will have that parity of transport options open to us through MetroAccess and ADA programs within WMATA itself.

We strongly urge people to digest the commitments of Appendix A of the proposed settlement agreement, and if they have concerns or comments to contact Elaine Gardner at the Washington Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights and Urban Affairs before May 22nd 2008.


  1. Disclosure: MWE - Moonwolf Enterprises, the company owned by the operators of DC Paratransit Info Pat and Kathi Spray, designed and hosts the website for the Washington Lawyer’s Committee For Civil Rights And Urban Affairs, who are the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in ERC v WMATA. [back]
  2. A copy of the Notice of proposed class action settlement is available on WMATA’s website at:

    [back]

Posted: 1 year, 11 months ago |
Categories: MetroAccess , WMATA | Tags: , , , | By: Kathi.   Print This Post Print This Post