Opinionist: MetroAccess's Apology Rings False
On Sundays, DCist publishes opinion pieces about life in D.C. We're keeping it in the family today, as the following column was written by my cousin, Rajiv Shah. If you have an opinion to share, please email us.
Metro Board Chairwoman Gladys Mack’s recent apology and pronouncements to improve customer service by the newly inducted WMATA Director Dan Tangherlini, reported in Friday’s Washington Post, will do little to assuage the ire of MetroAccess’s riders. As a visually impaired client of this paratransit service, mandated to transport disabled individuals since the mid-90’s, I have witnessed three changes in the contractual guard, which have yielded nothing more than cosmetic shifts in service. The same laundry list of problems present in 1996-- chronic truancy by drivers in picking up clients, personnel insensitivity to customers’ needs and Metro’s hesitancy to address these underlying issues—continues to plague this system today.
I regularly use MetroAccess to commute to my workplace in Southwest Washington from my Fairfax town home. Typically, during these trips, clients are expected to share rides, meaning that a driver might retrieve a person from Reston, VA, prior to my pickup, and an individual from Arlington following me. It is, therefore, not uncommon that these tours across town can last up to an-hour-and-a half when combined with the vagaries of rush-hour traffic. Add to this the multiplier effect of a client showing up late or a lost driver delayed while attempting to find a location, and you have an explosive recipe for frustration on both sides of the table.
My pet peeve in this mix is not so much the long commutes (these I have slowly learned to factor in after several years of experience) but the lack of explanation behind Metro’s and the Contractor’s decisions. There often seems to be no reason for a taxi cab (which is usually on time and does not entail ride sharing) appearing one morning in front of my house and a van (the untimely component) the next. It is the notion of the invisible hand and the lack of accountability for its mistakes that roils me.
In a meeting between clients and transportation officials at the Fairfax County Government Center last October, MetroAccess Director Christian Kent and a senior company official from MV Transportation, the current contractor since January of this year, painted a bright picture in describing the future of the service. In response to our ventilations about poor service by LogistiCare (MetroAccess’s former provider), Mr. Kent assured clients that improved procedures (such as the implementation of automatic alerts about a vehicle’s arrival and the use of Global Positioning Systems for navigation—which are as good as the maps on these devices) would improve service. In their euphoria about the “new kid on the block,” Metro made one glaring oversight: In a building with multiple entrances such as my office, how is a totally blind individual going to ask an auto-alert system about the location of his/her vehicle? By wading through 20 minutes of telephone hold time till an unsympathetic, live dispatcher appears? By that time, my ride may have already left, and I might have to opt to drive myself home. Against the backdrop of my experiences, I, therefore, leave it to the reader to judge the likelihood for change as a result of Ms. Gladys’s recent apology.
Rajiv Shah currently works as a computer specialist to support disabled employees of the US Dept. of Education.