'I’ve cried because of frustration,' Austin’s MetroAccess riders say service is repeatedly late

AUSTIN (KXAN) --- In the lobby of Sanchez Elementary School, Rebecca Ramirez waits on the MetroAccess bus to pick her up from work.

Ramirez has used the paratransit service for people with mobility disabilities since 2019 when she began using a wheelchair.

She says from the start – the service has been unreliable for her. For years, she describes often being left stranded with no other option but to wait.

“I’ve cried because of frustration,” Ramirez said.

CapMetro said its MetroAccess service has provided over 2 million rides since 2019. The agency said its complaint record is below 1%.

Records KXAN obtained show more than 900 complaints from 2019 to the start of 2023 from riders who said the paratransit bus shows up late repeatedly. Other riders said that even when they are picked up within their scheduled window, they spend hours in the vehicle and ultimately arrive at their destination late.

“Caller says that the vehicle rode around and got her to her dialysis [appointment] late. Pick up window was from 5 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. and she didn’t arrive [until] 6:40 a.m.,” one complaint provided to KXAN stated.

Another CapMetro employee wrote, “Customer states she was taken north to come back south, and as a result, she was 30 minutes late for her appointment.”

Another caller told CapMetro “that we are overbooking, and she is always late for dialysis.”

The complaints reveal similar sentiments – missed dialysis and doctors’ appointments, riders having their pay docked at work because they showed up late, and missing church services.  

One rider, a man who said he was quadriplegic, wrote a complaint to the agency saying the paratransit bus is constantly late picking him up.

Another rider said he was late to his job 23 times due to the late pick-ups.

“The customer states her ride was late. The customer states she is on oxygen, and when she arrived home, she was out of oxygen,” one complaint provided to KXAN via records request stated.

Despite repeated complaints – CapMetro leaders maintain the service is performing above federal standards.

“Just from my experiences – I’ve been at a number of different transit properties – I think the service here is great,” Executive Vice President Andrew Skabowski said in an interview with KXAN.

“I do think it’s wonderful, but there is always continuous improvement. There’s always a need to say 'Hey, what did we do wrong today.'”

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires paratransit services to ensure average wait time and travel time for paratransit riders is comparable to its other fixed route buses.

For Metro Access, on-time is considered any pick-up that happens within the scheduled 30-minute window. Whereas for typical CapMetro bus routes, on-time is considered departure times that are less than 6 minutes late and not before scheduled departure times.

“On one occasion when the 30-minute window closed, I was still here,” Ramirez said. “I waited an hour and a half after my window closed before my bus picked me up.”

Over the last year, MetroAccess data shows its total bus fleet is on-time more than 87% of the time. According to that same data, the service has had a lower on-time performance rate in the first months of 2023 than it did during the same months in 2021 and 2022.

“We as an agency feel that we are providing a strong and critical service to our community and for our customers, and our operators make every effort to be there and to make accommodations for all our customers,” CapMetro said in a statement.

Ramirez, and other riders who complained to CapMetro, made the distinction that they fault the scheduling made by dispatch more so than the drivers.

Instead, riders pointed to jam-packed schedules and large distances between pick-ups of other passengers as a source of the issue.

“It’s not the drivers,” Ramirez said. “Let me make that very clear. They try to help us.”

Later this year, CapMetro said it will start rolling out a new scheduling software system its leaders say should improve customer experience.

“We acknowledge that as an agency, we are constantly improving our services and we are sorry to our customers whom we have let down,” CapMetro said.

Ramirez said she used to call every time the Metro Access bus was late picking her up. But in the last few weeks, she said she hasn’t even bothered calling.

“I don’t even call anymore when they are late. I just wait,” Ramirez said.