What Disabled Riders Endure

"I have to follow the manifest, sir," the driver said.

He said that if he took Poyner home first, it would make him an hour late in picking up the other passenger.

By the time the van crossed town in rush-hour traffic, it arrived at the Department of Education at 5 p.m., and a blind woman got in. She was upset to discover that Poyner would be taken home first. What would be a 20-minute ride for her, she said, would now "take about an hour."

By the time Poyner arrived home at 5:35 p.m., he had been in the van for 58 minutes, apparently exceeding Metro and federal time limits for the trip. An MV Transportation executive disputed that. The federal guidelines say a ride should not take more than twice as long as a comparable trip using Metrorail or Metrobus. Metro's policy is more stringent: The ride should not exceed one and a half times a comparable trip. In Poyner's case, the comparable subway ride, according to Metro's RideGuide information system, is six minutes. Another option on RideGuide using both bus and rail would take 27 minutes.

Veronica Payne

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'This is just unacceptable.'

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Veronica Payne's morning ride from her Beltsville home to her Fairmont Heights job went pretty well. Mornings on MetroAccess tend to be smooth. As the day grows older, delays compound.

With her 1:15 p.m. return pickup time approaching, no automated call had come. Payne, who volunteers four hours a day answering phones at the police department in Fairmont Heights, picked up her cane, slowly shifted her body weight from left to right and headed to the front door of City Hall about 1:05 p.m.

Payne, who is 60 and has a degenerating disc and a bad hip, said she didn't want to take a chance on missing her ride home. "Sometimes they're out there and I don't know it," she said.

No one was there.

So she made her way back to her desk. At 1:10 p.m., Payne's cell phone rang to signal the van's arrival. She zipped up her purple coat and reached for her cane.

The office phone rang, and her boss, Police Chief Peter Jensen, answered. It was the driver, looking for directions.

Seven minutes later, another call. "Good God, you went the wrong way -- you're in D.C.," Jensen said, trying to direct the driver to Prince George's County.

The white sedan arrived at 1:21 p.m. Although the driver got lost twice, he was still within Payne's pickup window.

By 1:45, Payne had arrived back home.

At 4:15, she prepared to go out again, this time to see a client for crisis intervention counseling. The MetroAccess call came 10 minutes later.

As the driver listened to the GPS directions and headed down New York Avenue, Payne began to squirm. Her client's appointment was at 5:30 in Southwest Washington. It was nearing 5.

Payne asked whether the driver must pick up the next rider at 14th Street NW rather than dropping her off. The driver nodded. Payne now had a problem.

Because of the traffic, Payne arrived at 5:55. She was late, and she had a 6:30 return pickup scheduled. "This is just unacceptable," she said. She called a dispatcher to say she needed 30 more minutes to complete her counseling. Her ride should not have arrived until about 7.

The van came at 6:25. "So this ride is canceled?" the driver asked.

"No . . . I asked for 30 more minutes," Payne said as she stood at the front door. The driver went for a bite to eat, then picked her up at 7:10. An hour later, Payne returned home.

Jacqueline Petty

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'I wear myself out running.'

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In the past few weeks, vans have arrived an hour early or three hours after the appointed time, said Jacqueline Petty, 62, who lives in Northeast and commutes to her job at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The problems have forced her to take vacation time from work and miss therapy sessions to treat the bone problems in her leg.

Before 6 a.m. Tuesday, Petty had donned her coat and pulled a black beret over her silver curls. She shuffled to her living room window every few minutes. She hadn't been receiving the automated calls. At 6:21, she spotted the van. She eased herself out the door, using a walker.

The driver took Petty straight to work. But confusion was broadcast over the van's radio. A dispatcher was asking about another passenger whom the van was supposed to pick up. "He must have canceled. I don't have another 6:30," the driver said. Over the next few minutes, the driver and dispatcher argued about the nonexistent passenger.

"Sometimes they give you an add-on and they forget to tell you," the driver grumbled. "And they say, 'You get that add-on?' And we say, 'What add-on?' "

The company that ran the service before MV had a better system, the driver said. A machine would ring when the van got an order to pick up an extra passenger: "Ching! Ching! You knew you had an add-on."

Then there was the difficulty in getting directions. The automated system often was wrong, and it was nearly impossible to reach a dispatcher, the driver said. There's one dispatcher for every 20 to 25 drivers.

By 3:15, Petty was waiting in the lobby of HUD. Her shift wasn't supposed to end until 3:30, but she didn't want to risk missing the van. The day before, it had pulled away before she could get there from her eighth-floor office. "I wear myself out running" to see whether the cars are for her, she said.

Scott McDaniel

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A long wait in the cold.

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Many MetroAccess riders complain about late rides. But for some, early rides are just as troublesome.

Scott McDaniel is supposed to be picked up for work from his Reston townhouse at 7:15 a.m. But MetroAccess vehicles often arrive much earlier, so McDaniel, 37, who is blind and mentally disabled, makes sure he is ready by 6:30 and waits at the kitchen window. On Tuesday, the van came at 6:51 a.m. and took him to Woodmont CIC, the Arlington facility for developmentally disabled adults, by 7:38, before it opened. He had to wait more than 20 minutes in the cold. He routinely has to stand before locked doors in all kinds of weather anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

His afternoon pickup also was early, arriving at 2:55 p.m. for a 3:15 pickup, but less problematic because he was going home. Red Top taxi supplied the ride, totaling $36.05 on the meter, although McDaniel paid just the MetroAccess fare of $2.50. Metro and MV will reimburse the cab company.

Mildred Brown

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'Where's the door?'

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Service has improved lately, Mildred Brown said as she counted the steps from her doorstep to the end of the driveway, where the van sat idling. She wore a surgical mask, a cautionary measure after a recent lung transplant.

Brown has had so much trouble with the new MetroAccess service -- and has complained so loudly -- that MV put her on a "watch list" and the interim general manager of Metro came out to ride with her.

MV had a wrong address for Brown and kept dispatching vehicles to pick her up in "Sterling, Md.," which does not exist. The drivers sometimes would mistakenly head toward Sterling, Va., though the 68-year-old blind woman lives in Camp Springs, Md. She called to correct the error several times, but the mistake kept happening.

Her evening pickups from work -- she helps other disabled people as a supervisor with the D.C. Department of Human Services -- were worse. She was stranded six times in two weeks, relying on co-workers to drive her home or paying $25 for a cab ride -- 10 times as much as her MetroAccess fare. Another time, the van failed to pick her up after a doctor's appointment in Fairfax County. Unable to contact the company, she waited three hours before a friend was able to get her. All this since January.

Even with a prompt ride idling outside her home, as was the case Tuesday, little things can go awry.

"Where's the door?" Brown called out to the driver, tapping with her cane to find it. "The other side," the driver said, remaining behind the wheel. Brown said the drivers have told her they're not allowed to leave their vehicles and help because Metro considers MetroAccess a curb-to-curb service. This policy is counter to guidelines issued by the Federal Transit Administration, which say transit systems should help passengers get from their buildings and into vehicles.

The van reached Union Center Plaza at 6 a.m. She doesn't start work until 7 a.m., but she uses the time to relax and have coffee at a cafe next door.

Her afternoon pickup window is 4:15 to 4:45 p.m. The curb is always crowded at that time of day, and it is a minor struggle to try to figure out which ride is hers. Unable to see, she has to listen for drivers to call out her name.

At 4:30, her cell phone rang, signaling that her ride had arrived. She was easy to spot, she told the dispatcher: "I'm in a surgical mask." But as she stood at the curb, there was no sign of her ride. She once had to wait until 5:30.

A MetroAccess car rolled by slowly, stopped a block away, then slowly started backing up. After 15 minutes, Brown's co-workers walking down the street spotted the car and pointed out Brown.

It was 4:50 by the time Brown got inside. The driver apologized and said her manifest did not tell her that her passenger was blind.

During the trip, the driver ignored the GPS as it twice told her to turn on roads closed for construction. Brown arrived home at 5:48.

Denise Rush

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'There's no consistency.'

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Denise Rush patiently waited for her MetroAccess ride from her Suitland home to the Dupont Circle law firm where she works as a secretary.

Rush, 55, lost her sight seven years ago as a result of diabetes. She relies on MetroAccess to get her to work by 7 a.m.

It was 5:30 a.m., still dark outside. Her ride was scheduled for between 5:45 and 6:15 a.m.

Last month, she spent $85 on cabs when her rides didn't show up on three occasions. She has submitted the receipts to MetroAccess in the hope of being reimbursed. After she complained, her service improved. But last Friday, her afternoon driver didn't arrive at Steptoe and Johnson LLP until 5:20 p.m., an hour and five minutes late.

At 6 a.m. Tuesday, she heard a car honk. She opened her front door. An unmarked maroon sedan was double-parked outside. In recent weeks, MV has leased 15 additional vehicles to help improve service.

The driver didn't get out. She couldn't tell whether it was her ride. "You MetroAccess?" she shouted out. The driver said yes and opened his door. He helped her get into the front seat.

The driver, who had been on the job for two weeks, had picked up and dropped off one person in the District before going to Rush's house. And there was another to be picked up before taking Rush to work, the driver said. He plugged that person's address into his GPS. She lived on Stanton Road in the District. The GPS told him to make a right. But he made the wrong right and ended up going south on Suitland Parkway toward Upper Marlboro.

Rush was angry. There was no place to make a U-turn for miles, she said. "It's a long way before we can turn back," she said. The driver apologized.

Rush has given the GPS a nickname: Gertrude. "Don't listen to that lady," she told the driver. Four miles later, the driver turned around.

At 6:26 a.m., the driver pulled up to an apartment building on Stanton Road.

As they waited, Rush asked the driver if he was going to get her to work by 6:56 a.m., as scheduled. "I don't know," he said. Then he apologized.

Rush and the driver wondered whether a woman who had been standing outside for a few minutes was the next passenger. The driver asked if she was Lisa. She was but hadn't realized the unmarked car was her MetroAccess ride. "I would have never thought to get in here," said the woman, a diabetic.

The three pulled away but ended up in traffic. The second passenger was late for her dialysis appointment. She has to spend 3 1/2 hours on the machine but probably would have to cut it short to make her afternoon ride. There have been times when she has not been picked up. "I always carry around extra money" for a cab, she said.

By 6:55 a.m., the dialysis patient was dropped off at Gambro Healthcare in Capitol Hill. Rush had called to let her boss know she was going to be late. The driver entered Rush's work address into the GPS. He took a circuitous route to the law firm, needlessly driving around Scott Circle. Rush grew more frustrated. "Gertrude don't tell you the right way," she said.

By 7:20, she was at her office and the driver had 15 minutes to reach Alexandria for his next pickup.

The morning was tough, but Rush was most worried about the afternoon. The ride was scheduled to pick her up between 3:45 and 4:15 p.m. Punctuality is important because Rush has to take insulin by 5:30 p.m., she said. One night the week before, she got home at 6:30 and felt limp without her insulin.

"There's no consistency," she said. "They pick you up great for two weeks. Then they drive you down the toilet."

Rush waited in her office. At 4:14, she was about to inquire about her ride when the phone rang. The van was downstairs, and she was the only passenger. She was home by 5. "They just made it," she said.