Another Paratransit Fail

[jazzyjj]

Hello everybody. Well, just when my parents and I and other team members thought that the local paratransit service couldn't get any better, the following scenario happened about a week ago. I have started working out again at the local YMCA, but this time with one of the newer staff members here. He is a very good worker, and a good guy too. So on this particular morning I was picked up by paratransit per my request. The bus pulled up right in front of me, and the driver opened the door and guided me on board. I was his only passenger for that trip, so he dropped me off inside the Y like I had requested. Actually I was informed during my workout that the driver had somehow missed the Y and managed to circle the entire block. Then toward the end of the workout, my tutor told me that we had to go downstairs and meet my ride home. Well, we did so and were promptly informed by one of the front-desk people that my bus had left a few moments prior to our arrival downstairs. So my tutor and I thanked them, and he ended up driving me home. When I got back to my apartment and checked my answering machine, there was a message from the local bus company from a few minutes prior to my arrival back at the pad. The message said that my bus was waiting for me. The time of the message was about 10 minutes before my scheduled pick-up time at the Y. Yet I had my cell phone on me all that time, and it was turned on. Absolutely no phone calls.





Fast-forward to a couple days ago. I phoned into the reservation line to try and schedule a round trip for yesterday, which was Tuesday. But they gave me a time which was way before I would've even gotten out of bed, and told me that no other times were available. So I guess our paratransit service is having issues yet again, and that they're back to their old tricks. I was actually talking with another driver a few weeks ago, who admitted to me that the dispatchers suck at their job. This was what I thought all along, since I've had issues with the service before. This same thing happened just today when I tried to schedule a round trip on paratransit for tomorrow. So I am taking a taxicab to the YMCA, and one back and hopefully things will go smoother.

Comments

[jazzyjj]

This is me responding to my own entry. The local bus company has email and I think text alerts re paratransit to which one can easily subscribe. I don't yet have the ability to text reliably, so I just subscribed via email. In addition, there is now an online portal where all? paratransit trips can be viewed. This portal has been in beta for a good while, and it is very accessible with Apple's in-built screen reader and with the screen reader extension for Google Chrome on my Mac. Yet there is as of this writing no way to book trips online, nor to create a profile. Having a profile would save a lot of time for both rider and reservationist/dispatcher. But it seems very few people think like that these days.