Data Errors Blamed for Poor Metro Van Service

By Lyndsey Layton and Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 27, 2006

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.

White told the Metro directors yesterday the account was not true, because MV's database includes an address for the airport. But Monson told a reporter it is possible that the database had the airport address but that the reservationist erred, information that he did not mention to the Metro board.

"I have no reason to lie about that. I was just trying to get to the airport," Coward said yesterday. "That really upsets me. They're trying to cover up for the abysmal service they're providing by blaming the riders."

Robert Smith, who represents Maryland on the Metro board, said he doubted that problems with MetroAccess were widespread.

But Jim Graham, who represents the District on the board, said that he had been "bombarded" by e-mails and telephone calls from disabled riders and that Smith and others were failing to appreciate the severity of the situation. "This is a crisis for a number of people," Graham said.

One of those stranded riders was an MV employee.

William White, 59, took telephone calls from angry riders wanting to know the whereabouts of their MetroAccess rides. White, who uses a wheelchair and rides MetroAccess, said he was stranded for more than three hours in the middle of the night Saturday.

White had reserved and confirmed his trip from a Springfield restaurant to his home in Northeast Washington. But the MetroAccess ride that was supposed to pick him up at 2 a.m. never materialized. He called MV but couldn't reach anyone, he said. At 4 a.m., he reached his MV supervisor on his private cell phone. The supervisor arranged for him to be picked up about 5:40 a.m.

After that, White said, he could no longer work for the company. He turned in his employee badge yesterday. "How can I do my job if I don't have any faith in the company?" he said. "I got left out there all night long."

MV executive Ryan Larsen apologized to him.

"But I never received an explanation as to why the ride didn't show up," White said. "I would like to know what happened to my ride."