Some seven months after the Handi-Van system was upgraded with badly needed new vehicles and real-time scheduling software, Oahu transit officials acknowledge that the big fixes they’d hoped to see aren’t taking hold yet — and riders still have plenty of horror stories to share.
On Tuesday, during a meeting for Handi-Van users, Mililani passenger Susan Oya said that she arrived late to services last week for her husband, Army veteran George Oya, at Punchbowl’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific after a Handi-Van failed to pick her up on time.
Another rider, from Wahiawa, said it sometimes takes her three hours to get to the Queen’s Medical Center in town because the driver picks up so many other passengers en route. Then it can take just as long to get home, she added.
"That was not transportation. That was incarceration," Kathy Gumpel said Tuesday, telling several dozen other riders gathered at the state Capitol building how she often feels during those six-hour round trips.
Gumpel, a retired attorney, is among the 3,600 or so Oahu residents with disabilities who also rely on the Handi-Van service each day. Accounts of nightmarish service such as hers are nothing new. For years passengers have vented that they’ve lost hours waiting on hold to book rides over the phone — and lost even more time when those vans often don’t arrive on time. Sometimes the delays have more serious consequences, such as causing passengers to miss medical appointments.
However, local transit officials had hoped to see major improvements after installing the new scheduling software in October. They also looked to enact more stringent penalties for late cancellations and shorten the period a passenger can book a reservation, among other measures. An influx of 99 new vans to the fleet, most of them years overdue, further encouraged riders and city officials to hope for better service.
Despite those changes, Handi-Vans still arrive at their destination within 30 minutes of scheduled pickup only between 80 and 90 percent of the time, said Roger Morton, president of Oahu Transit Services, which runs the city’s Handi-Van fleet. (The group considers such arrivals that fall within 30 minutes to be "on time.")
One year ago, during a press event led by Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell to tout brand-new Handi-Vans, Morton said the system was running just under 90 percent on time.
On Tuesday, Morton said OTS’ goal is to make Handi-Van service at least 95 percent on time.
He added that he was "frustrated" that the system hasn’t seen "better improvements" since October.
Several of the riders at Tuesday’s meeting of the Citizens for a Fair ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) Ride, or C-FADAR, pressed for more accountability for OTS and the city. Their calls echoed similar requests that go back years.
"I keep hearing the same words: ‘We’re working on it,’ ‘we’re trying,’ ‘we’re going to,’ ‘we will,’ ‘we might,’ ‘someday,’" Handi-Van rider Sheryl Nelson said Tuesday. "You can’t keep saying the same thing for years and years and years." Nelson called for OTS to set deadlines to meet service benchmarks.
Morton did say that OTS has seen significantly fewer complaints since October. A spreadsheet he provided showed hardly any complaints about busy phone service in 2015, following a spike of 107 in October.
The data did, however, show an uptick in passenger complaints for late pickups this year. There were 56 such complaints made to OTS in April compared with 24 in March, Morton’s data showed.
He further expressed some optimism that adding about 30 new drivers since this time last year, bringing the total of Handi-Van drivers to about 300, could still help improve service.
The city Auditor’s Office recently launched a long-anticipated audit of the Handi-Van system. Former City Councilman Breene Harimoto requested a Handi-Van audit last year because of the complaints, but the Council agreed to hold off until city transit officials could introduce the new scheduling and policy changes. City audit staff attended Tuesday’s meeting as they familiarized themselves with the Handi-Van issues and players, city Auditor Edwin Young said.
Meanwhile, some riders now contend that the Handi-Van system has a problem with civil rights violations — not just customer service complaints.
Aaron Hunger, a University of Hawaii doctoral researcher who’s used the Handi-Van since February following ankle surgery, said the service violates Title III of the federal ADA law when it makes disabled passengers wait more than an hour past their scheduled pickup and takes them on unreasonably long rides, such as the ones Gumpel endures.
"These people have a legitimate grievance," Hunger said Tuesday. Hunger, who said he quickly grew exasperated with the service once he started using it, conducted a 60-day study from his own rides from Kapolei to downtown. He said he had to wait an average of 42 minutes past his scheduled pickup and that he spent 15 hours on the phone in that period waiting to schedule his rides.
