About one month after officials implemented a new reservation system and policy, Handi-Van users are still outraged by the service they’re receiving.
"You guys have got to get your act together with the reservations," Rose Pou told city and Oahu Transit Services officials during a meeting held Tuesday at the state Capitol. She said she has waited in the sun for 90 minutes for a scheduled pickup. "I’m so fed up with you guys."
Last month, TheHandi-Van switched to a real-time scheduling software that’s supposed to allow more precise pickup times. Under the old system, reservationists scheduled pickups for the hour without knowing how many other riders were booked at that time.
At Tuesday’s meeting, customers also complained about the phone scheduling system and a policy reducing the reservation period to two days from seven.
Michael Formby, city Department of Transportation Services director, said studies show a shorter scheduling period reduces changes by riders.
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SCHEDULED PICKUP TIME
The new scheduling system’s goal was for more precise pickup times but many are still picked up after the 30 minute window.
30 MINUTES
Eighty-two percent of TheHandi-Van riders were picked up within 30 minutes after their scheduled pickup last week, an improvement from the beginning of the month when fewer than 70 percent of riders were picked up during that same window, according to Oahu Transit Services.
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He said his department switched to the real-time reservation system — a best practice elsewhere — because the department has been faulted in past audits for not following best practices. He said the city could reverse course if the policy is a poor match for Honolulu, but doesn’t believe that has been determined yet.
"I would rather have tried to improve the system and failed … than to have never tried to make the system better, and that’s what we’re doing," Formby said. "I hear your frustration."
Roger Morton, president and general manager of OTS, which operates TheHandi-Van, said the paratransit service is planning to hire 35 to 40 new drivers in about three months to reduce delays. Currently there are about 260 drivers. The service is also planning to hire three people to take reservations as a way to shorten call times.
"I do think in the long term, once we get (the system) tweaked … we will have a better system for the public than we could do with our old system, which frankly was a ‘mom and pop’ system,"Morton said. "We are no longer a ‘mom and pop’ operator."
Morton accepted part of the blame for the delays, saying TheHandi-Van officials underestimated trip times. Morton said the system’s software is also overestimating the speed of travel on Honolulu’s streets.
Officials had planned to hire 18 drivers before the new system was started, but only four in the driver’s class were able to pass a commercial driver’s license test, contributing to the recent problems, he said.
Further compounding the problems were road construction when the system became operational Oct. 16 and a drop in driver productivity because drivers are using computer-generated routes rather than designated routes as under the previous system, Morton said.
