Data Errors Blamed for Poor Metro Van Service

The new company hired by Metro to transport disabled and elderly riders repeatedly sends vans to the wrong addresses or at the wrong times because it is having trouble fixing a backlog of errors, the company's top executive said yesterday.

Frustrated riders say they have flagged the problems for MV Transportation again and again since the company took over MetroAccess on Jan. 15, but the mistakes keep occurring. They say the company is wasting resources by dispatching vehicles on phantom trips.

Jon Monson, MV's chief executive officer, told Metro's board of directors that his staff has corrected 30 percent of the database on riders and that it would be at least a week until the rest of the information is clarified. He said the company was having trouble reaching many of the 16,000 people eligible to ride MetroAccess.

But Monson later told a reporter that even when a rider calls MV to correct bad data, the operator cannot make the change on the spot, and the information has become caught in a lengthy backlog of corrections.

Mildred Brown, a Maryland resident who is legally blind, said she has been calling MetroAccess nearly daily since Jan. 17 to correct a bad address. MV's database says she lives in Sterling, but Brown lives in Camp Springs. Despite Brown's calls, MV repeatedly has dispatched a van to pick her up in Sterling, most recently Wednesday morning, she said. The database also has the wrong time for her afternoon pickup from her District job to her home, she said.

Charles Harper, a 27-year-old autistic man, is supposed to be picked up from his Reston home at 8:15 a.m. three times a week for transportation to his Chantilly job. MetroAccess confirmed the pickup time and other information, according to a Jan. 8 letter mailed to the Harpers.

But four times in the last two weeks, the drivers have arrived early -- once at 7 a.m. -- Harper's parents said. As a result, he has been arriving at his job before the doors are open, standing in the cold and rain for up to an hour, his mother said.

The Harpers called MetroAccess numerous times to resolve the problem, but confusion has reigned. The drivers said their schedule lists Harper's pickup time as 7:45 a.m., but the dispatcher showed a pickup time of 8 a.m. for a trip the Harpers have been expecting at 8:15 a.m.

MV and Metro managers said they have set up a way that riders can correct trip information on Metro's Web site. They also have planned weekly conference calls with riders and created a hotline for dialysis patients having trouble with their trips.

At yesterday's Metro board meeting, transit officials, MV executives and some board members laid the blame for MetroAccess problems on a variety of targets, including the riders, the media, advocates for the disabled, the previous contractor and the companies that bid on the MetroAccess contract but lost. Metro is paying MV $210 million to operate the service for four years.

Metro Chief Executive Richard A. White said recent stories in The Washington Post about poor MetroAccess service included information fabricated by disabled riders. He mentioned Robert Coward's account of trying to book a trip to Reagan National Airport last week.

Coward, a 42-year-old paraplegic who uses a wheelchair, said he called MetroAccess last Thursday to book a trip to the airport Friday. He said the reservationist couldn't locate an address for the airport, put him on hold for 20 minutes and then said she couldn't enter the address into the computer and would call him back. She never called back, Coward said. He called MetroAccess again but got a busy signal until it was too late to book a ride. He took the subway to the airport and had to strap his luggage to his wheelchair and drag it along behind him, he said.