Photo by T.D. Ford

Metro certainly has its fair share of problems, and users of the mass transit system aren’t shy about complaining when given the chance. Overall, though, a new survey finds that most riders are generally satisfied with Metro and Metrobus.

Yesterday Metro released the results of its Voice of the People survey, in which it randomly polled close to 800 users of rail and bus service from D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

For Metrobus, 80 percent of D.C. users, 86 percent of Maryland users and 94 percent of Virginia users expressed satisfaction with overall service. Reliability lagged slightly behind, though: only 68 percent of D.C. respondents said Metrobus was reliable, compared to 76 percent in Maryland and 82 percent in Virginia. Fully 74 percent of those in D.C. would recommend Metrobus to a friend, as would 85 percent in Maryland and 85 percent in Virginia.

For Metro, 80 percent of respondents said they were happy with the service provided, while 79 percent said they would recommend it to a friend. Reliability, though, took a big hit, coming in at 65 percent. Average riders were three minutes longer than expected, and only 65 percent of respondents were happy with how clean the trains were.

Of those users that interacted with a station manager, 59 percent said they met expectations, while 24 percent said they didn’t. As for the announcements made over stations PAs, they’re as garbled as we’ve always thought: 44 percent of users said they heard and understood them, while 33 percent said they could hear them but had no clue what they were saying.

Of course, there are some caveats for both sets of results. For Metrobus, younger customers—those 35 and under—see the system as less reliable. Additionally, Hispanic riders and commuters are more likely to recommend the bus than other groups. As for the train, well, it boils down to what line you ride most often and how often you ride it:

Demographic differences include that Hispanic riders believe reliability of the rail system is significantly lower than non-Hispanics. The oldest customers, those over 55, are most likely to recommend the rail system to their friends. Meanwhile, commuters on the rail system are much less likely to recommend the rail system to their friends than are infrequent riders—the opposite of commuter bus riders. A geographic difference emerged as well—Yellow, Blue and Green riders were more likely to rate reliability as higher compared to Red and Orange line riders. Compared to other large transit systems, Metrorail is on par with overall customer satisfaction but not in reliability.

Persistent Metro critic Unsuck D.C. Metro wasn’t convinced by the results of Metro’s survey, so it posted its own unscientific query: 95 percent of the blog’s readers aren’t happy with Metro’s service.

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