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Last Sat­ur­day, I filed a com­plaint on the Metro Tran­sit “Com­ment on our Ser­vice” page, regard­ing the con­sis­tently shoddy and incon­sis­tent bus ser­vice that usu­ally graces us on nights and week­ends. Specif­i­cally, I am speak­ing toward routes 6 and 23; how­ever, I think the issue is not iso­lated.

As of Wednes­day, I received the reply to my mes­sage, quoted below (with the trans­porta­tion manager’s name and num­ber redacted for pri­vacy):

I apol­o­gize for the incon­ve­nience caused you by this oper­a­tor run­ning late. I have tracked his work and see he was run­ning late almost all day on 11÷7÷2009.

I will be speak­ing with this oper­a­tor and also have one of our Street Super­vi­sors trail this bus to see what is hap­pen­ing to cause such extreme delays.

If you con­tinue to have prob­lems, please con­tact us again.

Sin­cerely,
[redacted]
Assist. Trans­porta­tion Man­ager
REF#: [redacted]

I am pretty impressed so far. I hope the effort con­tin­ues to evolve toward res­o­lu­tion.

I also want to stress con­struc­tive com­plaints ver­sus destruc­tive com­plaints. I think that fil­ing my com­plaint in the space they pro­vide is help­ful both to them and me. What is not help­ful is those who unnec­es­sar­ily accost bus dri­vers while on-duty. It will only worsen the prob­lem and reduce the driver’s feel­ing of safety in his or her work­place.

Also, I think that I was called today by a mem­ber of the Tran­sit Man­agers and Super­vi­sors Asso­ci­a­tion. I did not answer the call because I didn’t rec­og­nize the num­ber, and there was no mes­sage left. A Google search, how­ever, calls up this page.

UPDATE (2009−11−13 14:31): So I just got another email from a Metro Tran­sit Street Super­vi­sor. Text fol­lows:

Hello Mr. Maki. I checked into your con­cern about the route 23 run­ning behind sched­ule thus caus­ing you to be late for work. I’d like to apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience our ser­vice may have caused you. We at Metro Tran­sit value you as a cus­tomer and that’s not indica­tive of the ser­vice we try to pro­vide to the pub­lic. We have iden­ti­fied the prob­lem and plan to address the mat­ter imme­di­ately. If you don’t notice an improve­ment in the ser­vice don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us so we can get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter. Thank you so much for rid­ing with Metro Tran­sit and please con­tinue to uti­lize our ser­vice. Have a won­der­ful day.

Sin­cerely,
[redacted]
District/street Supv
REF#: [redacted]

Wow. I’m excited to see improve­ment, and if the response from the man­agers and super­vi­sors are any indi­ca­tion, that should hap­pen soon.

Thank you Metro Tran­sit!