Disabled Transit Data Was Misstated
MetroAccess Audit Shows Performance Numbers Inflated

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 23, 2006

The contractor in charge of Metro's troubled transportation service for people with disabilities overstated its on-time performance and undercounted the number of times riders were left stranded during its first several months of service, according to an independent audit.

MetroAccess's "on-time" goal is to have at least 93.5 percent of all scheduled trips be picked up within a 30-minute window, but the contractor failed to achieve that target in each of the first six months of the year. Its performance showed steady improvement, however, from a low of 84.2 percent in January to 94 percent in August.

The audit corroborates many of the problems that MetroAccess riders have complained about since January, when MV Transportation took over the service. The report is the latest assessment to say Metro and MV need better oversight to properly manage the curb-to-curb service. The audit, by TranSystems Corp., also raises questions about MV's ability to provide timely, accurate data.

"This report underscores the importance of our key recommendations: that Metro needs to strengthen its contract oversight and monitoring," said Wendy Klancher, a transportation planner and member of a MetroAccess advisory group.

The report, which has not been released publicly, highlights the latest problems for one of Metro's most costly and difficult services. The previous MetroAccess provider, LogistiCare Inc., received bonuses for questionable performance data even as riders complained about missed and late trips. So Metro sought a new contractor and MV was signed last year to a four-year, $204 million deal, the lowest bid. But transit directors have since questioned whether they are getting what they want, rather than what they paid for.

"I think we have come to realize that the contract we bid and the service we want to provide are two different things," said Dan Tangherlini, Metro's interim general manager. "The original deal was focused on cost reduction, not service provision."

TranSystems observed MV's recordkeeping and reporting procedures in mid-May and reviewed months of daily service reports. Those reports, which were preliminary and incomplete, "appear to overstate on-time performance by about 2 - 5 percent" from January through May, the audit says.

After MV did a final scouring of the reports, the data showed the contractor overstated on-time performance for the first seven months by 2.5 percentage points. MetroAccess provides about 100,000 trips each month. Using the preliminary data, the consultant also said MV was undercounting the number of missed trips -- vehicle no-shows -- by as much as half. MV's final data analysis showed the contractor undercounted the number of missed trips by about 10 percent overall from January to August. Instead of an average 1,309 missed trips per month using the tentative numbers, the final numbers showed 1,444 missed trips per month, Metro officials said.

The report "identified a lot of areas where there are a lot of questions," said Steve Yaffe, Metro's chief operating officer for community transportation. Since August, Metro and MV have put new procedures in place to make sure trips are accurately reported and recorded, he said.

About 16,000 disabled riders who are physically unable to take the subway or bus depend on MetroAccess. About 80 percent of rides are provided by MV and four subcontractors. The remaining 20 percent are delivered by another group of subcontractors and taxicab companies.

In some cases, the auditor found that missed trips by taxis were being improperly recorded. They showed up in MV's database as on-time pickups because MV dispatchers had scheduled new trips to replace missed ones. In other instances, trips that appeared to be "missed" showed up in the database as "no-shows," unfairly marking passengers and jeopardizing their future service.

These practices are no longer in use, Yaffe said. Additionally, Metro and MV have tightened monitoring by comparing electronic records with drivers' daily trip logs, auditing taxicab payment vouchers and sending street supervisors to spot-check performance.

After MV took over the service in January, Metro was flooded with complaints about missed or late trips and rides that zigzagged across the region because reservationists typed in the right street addresses but the wrong towns.

The company was assessed $227,500 in penalties from April to July for missing performance goals in several areas, including missed and late trips, customer complaints, and telephone response times.

Metro and MV replaced key staff, and an advisory group was established to recommend changes, some of which were put into effect. Over the summer, some riders said service had improved noticeably.

But in recent weeks, with increased fall ridership and high staff turnover at MV, riders are again complaining about missed and late trips and routing that defies common sense.

A few weeks ago, Nancy Hartgrove was picked up from her Silver Spring home and taken past her office at 17th and M streets NW to drop off another passenger in Southwest Washington before being taken to her building.

"Whoever is programming these computers doesn't know how these areas are set up," said Hartgrove, 59.

Scheduling remains a problem, Yaffe acknowledged. Metro is working with MV so that trips are scheduled so "the human rules the computer," he said. But, he added: "It's not going to happen overnight."

MV's five schedulers typically manage 70 to 125 "runs," or the list of a driver's trips. That amounts to double or triple the industry "best practice," industry experts say. That means schedulers spend most of their time dealing with the basic task of getting someone a ride. They don't have time or proper training to do difficult types of scheduling, such as looking for patterns from one geographical area to another that can then be grouped together more efficiently, Yaffe said.