baltimoresun.com
MTA service, communications leave riders stranded
By Catherine Goldstead
6:00 AM EST, January 17, 2012
As a daily commuter who rides the Maryland Transit
Administration's #11 bus northbound in the morning and southbound in the
evening, I have to wonder: Could there be a more unreliable
organization than the MTA? I have certainly never encountered one.
The
MTA must put forth a more significant effort to try to keep bus, train
and light rail running on schedule than current results reflect. Two
months ago, when I waited at a stop for two full hours while as many as
four scheduled buses were no-shows, I called customer service — which
offered absolutely no help. Their tactic, I've found after many calls,
is to place the caller on hold and check in several minutes later to
ask, "Has a bus come yet?" They claim to check into bus status and
possible diversions, but when a customer service representative comes
back on the call, rarely do they have information to share.
In
this particular instance, I put up enough of a fuss that I was finally
transferred to the complaints supervisor, who informed me that unless
there was a pattern of no-shows for two-hour periods of time, there
wasn't much she could do. Really — four scheduled buses in a row not
showing up is not cause for immediate action?
During one recent
week, my northbound bus ran 10 to 15 minutes late each day. The
following week, it was running at least 5 minutes early. For every day
that I report the bus, I have yet to see it arrive on time consistently.
The driver and schedule have not changed, nor does traffic seem to be
the culprit. What's more, I learned from my call with the supervisor
that the MTA was missing a driver for one of the morning buses on my
route, and that if a driver doesn't show or a replacement can't be
found, the bus just doesn't run. Period. No notice to passengers, no
adjustment of the schedule — just a bus that is frequently a no-show or
runs off-schedule if a temporary driver is found.
This policy is
detrimental to those who rely on public transit regularly. I, for one,
do not have a car, although if I could afford one at this juncture in my
life, I most certainly would jump at the opportunity over waiting for
another no-show bus.
Recently, the MTA began implementing the
"Rate Your Ride" program, presumably to gain customer insight and
prioritize routes and transit methods that require more funding and
supervision to improve. On the surface, it's a wonderful idea. However,
the program has significant limitations. Its data set is based solely on
text messages and responses to inadequate survey prompts to a program
hosted by a survey messaging service. This overlooks passengers who use
cellphones infrequently, such as the elderly or those without unlimited
text plans. By not including options such as calls to customer service,
feedback on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and emails and
form submissions (http://mta.maryland.gov/complaints) sent to the
complaints department, "Rate Your Ride" severely diminishes its pool of
potential respondents, skewing the survey results. Limiting the survey
pool will result in poorly reflected priorities and misuse of federal
and state funding for public transportation.
For Baltimoreans
relying on public transit to get to work, the level of unreliability is
atrocious. During these economic hard times, when citizens are relying
on public transit to save a dollar, public transit becomes all the more
important. If the MTA doesn't have enough drivers, it should hire more.
It should strategically remove selected stops or reroute buses to
ensure that congestion on routes diminishes to prevent buses running
back-to-back. The MTA should make stronger efforts to inform drivers of
changes to signage so that newly assigned drivers follow the correct
route.
Most importantly, the MTA must make an effort to run
according to schedule and to increase transparency, because when you get
down to it, what good is public transit without a reliable schedule —
and how can public transit serve the public appropriately if methods of
communication are not numerous and both frequently and vigorously
monitored?
Catherine Goldstead lives in Baltimore and works in Towson.
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
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