City of Santa Clarita Transit
Accessibility Advisory Committee Meeting
October 2, 2008
CALL TO ORDER: 9:02am
MEMBERS PRESENT: Anna Martinez, Jim Hogan, Kurt Baldwin, Linda Wood, Keith Curry, Sam Sammons, John Taylor, Ken Schwartz
ALSO PRESENT: Adrian Aguilar, Denise Ware, Al Scullen, Steve Chang
MEMBERS ABSENT: Santa Clarita Adult Day Care
RESIGNATION SUBMITTED: Lupe Covarrubias
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: It was noted by Jim Hogan that, on page 3, paragraph 2, further explanation should have been given in regards to MV Transportation going beyond their requirements in assisting an Access Services Inc. (ASI) user in Santa Clarita to book a round trip to Ventura. In the standard transfer the user would make all the necessary phone calls to book the ride. Adrian will have the October Minutes retyped and submitted at the November meeting.
CHAIR:KEN: Can we get a motion to accept the minutes as corrected? Jim made the motion and Sam seconded it. It was approved by all. KEN: The motion is carried.
CHAIR REPORT: KEN: There were two items on my report: we still don’t have numbers on the vans yet and I’d like to get that done as soon as possible.
ADRIAN: We have a new maintenance manager that came on board a week ago. Denise did have a discussion about the numbers with him and he assures us they will be in the vans this weekend.
KEN: Great. The second thing I have on my agenda is to talk a little about the Adult Day Care (ADC) clients. I talked to Joe King at ASI but I don’t remember what his title was. Does any one remember?
ADRIAN: Director of Contract Operations. KEN: Anyway, he was going to make an effort to send examiners over to ADC to get as many people as possible on ASI and I’d like to follow up on that because if everybody is ASI certified the city of Santa Clarita is getting an extra $30-35 a trip per day and that would move our ASI ridership alot higher and I’d like to see that happen. I’d like a follow-up on that.
JIM asked Adrian about the difference in service to the ADC now as opposed to a year ago. ADRIAN responded that the city has an agreement with the ADC to provide service to them, transporting certified passengers to day care, under the old agreement. For ASI certified passengers it’s booked as a regular dayside trip because those folks are transported to day care daily. For those not certified, it’s a Dial-A-Ride (DAR) trip. KEN stated he wants to get as many certified as possible.
JIM reminded Ken that the ADC has not sent an agency representative to the meetings for several months and because of that the agency position has the potential to become vacant. We need to either make a motion to eliminate ADC from the board or approach them to see if they have any interest in serving on the committee.
ADRIAN: ADC may or may not have a new director now. There have been a numbers of problems and staffing changes. The director was the one who usually attended. JIM: Since it’s an agency position, Lisa does not need to resign, and Raychel would need to be appointed as the agency rep. by ADC.
KEN: This is what we are waiting for from ADC. Moving right along…Lupe Covarrubias has resigned from the board, opening up another position. (John asked Denise to remove her name from the Support Group list as well as the Board member List.) I would like to see something in the By-Laws changed to whereby anyone who wants to get on the committee has to attend 3 consecutive meetings before they are even considered. Does that require an amendment to the By-Laws?
JIM: No. We determine if we have the position available, we vote to submit that name to the Director of Services, along with our recommendation. Then he decides if he wants to accept our recommendation or not.
ADRIAN: This is what the By-Laws say:
“If any individual meets any of the criteria set forth in Article 3 of these By-Laws they may nominate his or herself to be considered for board membership by submitting a resume. The Director of Administrative Services may appoint any individual for any category of membership as long as the individual meets the requirements for the category of membership for which he or she has been appointed. Any member who misses more than 25% of the meetings unexcused during his or her term maybe subject to removal from the committee. Further, any member who misses 3 consecutive meetings may be subject to removal. The committee would then make the final determination whether or not to remove the member.”
KEN: I think that’s pretty well clear. Ken brought up the question of where Keith’s name was in the board member positions, and it was determined he represented the disabled community and not seniors.
JIM: So what do we have open then? KEN: A Disabled persons slot and possible Agency slot. Adrian agreed to contact ADC as to their intensions and bring a report to the next meeting. Sam expressed concern about losing too many members all at once and was told the quorum numbers would adjust automatically to the number of members available. Jim had a scheduling disagreement with reservations in which he was not satisfied as to their response and handling of it and Denise agreed and said she’d look into it. He also had a problem in not only getting to his train on time but in exiting the van in a safe and timely manner. Adrian addressed that issue with Denise.
KURT expressed concern as to the legality of the city’s requiring younger, disabled riders to be ASI certified before becoming eligible for DAR. The California Transportation Development Act reads that DAR is supposed to be another option for seniors and the disabled. Prop. C was also passed with those intensions. It has nothing to do with the ADA Paratransit and the fixed route buses. Adrian responded that they are looking at revising the eligibility requirements because of all the changes in the program and system’s operations over the years.
GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENTS: (3 Minutes per Speaker) There are none.
OLD BUSINESS:
MV Issues: DENISE: We are about two weeks into using Trapeze. It has not been as smooth a transition as I would have liked, but I think they are starting to get a grasp on it. We need to do a couple of things inside the office. We need to learn to be proactive instead of reactive to situations, and that’s learning a whole new mindset. Monitors in dispatch allow me to see four hours ahead of time which rides are going to be late, and I can then make scheduling changes as needed for smooth pick-up and arrival times. We are going to be able to give ETA’s out of the call center soon, as soon as they get trained, so you don’t have to be put on hold for 30 seconds or more. KEN: What are the reservation hours for ASI and DAR now? DENISE: 6am to 10pm, M-S and 8am to 8pm on Sunday for ASI and 6am to 8pm for DAR seven days a week. You can book a ride a week in advance or book a next day ride.
ASI Issues: STEVE: Last Monday ASI, the City, and MV staff were invited to The SC Senior Center to give a 1 hour presentation and I want to thank you Ken and John for inviting us. It went by too quickly. We had 37 people turn out and we had a wonderful time with our Santa Clarita seniors.
The Community meeting schedule has been finalized and is being sent to the printers. You should see a flyer pretty soon in the vehicles as well as it being mailed to the riders. The first meeting will start October 25th and the last one will be November 15th. All are on a Saturday to allow for a larger turnout involving those who work, go to school, etc. Some are being held at libraries, but here in Santa Clarita it’s at City Hall. Olive View has been added to the Facey-VA loop as a single destination, with a fee of $2.00. Kaiser was discussed and it’s a bit farther, so maybe Adrian can talk about The Freedom Funds and how some of that may be applied to adding Kaiser. Jim and John complimented Steve on the changes.
In the phone reporting, the city has customized the phone system to send a current day’s data on ASI trips the next day. The project is near completion and we have received the first report. Minor adjustments need to be made to the system.
In going from Route Match to Trapeze, the SFV operation already uses Trapeze. It’s a fairly good system. ASI has purchased scheduling software for all their providers and we’re implementing it in phases. The first to get it is Global Paratransit in November. In February MV in the SFV will switch over and eventually we will get it to Santa Clarita. Once that happens we hope all our providers will be able to book trips and potentially route trips using the same software. Eventually we’ll have centralized dispatch and providers can electronically switch or exchange trips between regions. It’s a very long-term project.
KURT: That means a driver can go into another region, pick up a fare, and bring them back to the SFV.
STEVE: We have a new contract with City which started in August. Steve answered Al’s question about the two MV contract (Santa Clarita and the San Fernando Valley). In Santa Clarita ASI contract with the City who sub-contract s the operation to MV. ASI doesn’t have a contract directly with MV here. We have a contract with the City. Al continued on this topic and ran out of time. A Call to Order was made and we had to move on.
STEVE: ASI achieved a major goal in September. It was the first time we reached a system-wide On-Time performance of 91%. I have been here about seven years and we’ve never done that before September 2008. We are very proud of this achievement and will continue to remain focused and work as a group to meet all our goals and provide better service for everyone.
KURT: Has ASI or the City received notice from FTA about the complaint Jim put in on behalf of everybody?
ADRIAN: The city has not. JIM stated he spoke to Washington, who continues to give him the run-around, so he’s contacting David Knight to help him get some answers. Steve spoke again about the public’s expectations of ASI and what their focus actually is in running ASI. Steve, Jim, Adrian and Denise all had a very long discussion about this.
ASI had general public riders on a van, which was an error, they should be on DAR and phone numbers were exchanged so Denise and Adrian could be notified right away.
City Transit Issues: ADRIAN: THE NEW FREEDOM PROJECT: They are still working with Caltrans to finish up all the paperwork. The project will operate out of the SCV.
The boundaries are: Ventura Blvd. to the south, the 210 to the east, Topanga to the west, and the SCV to the north. They received the full requested amount for operations and capital outlay was $60/70 thousand less than requested. They estimated they would need 2/3 vehicles to provide the service and those would come from existing stock. The hours would be 7am to 7pm, seven days a week. The cost to the rider could be $4/5 each way. We anticipate 150 trips per day. More information will be available at the next meeting.
Two of the eight new fixed route buses have been delivered and the others are in Ontario at the manufacturing facility. There have been several minor problems which we are working to clear up. They hold 37 passengers, low floor and run Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). The new DAR vehicles are scheduled, tentatively, to be converted to CNG towards the end of October, one to two vehicles a week until they are all done.
Phone Stats: 82 complaints: 4 DAR, 3 ASI and 75 with TRANSIT.
On-Time Performance is up at 87% from last month. We looked into some of the issues from the last meeting and one of the causes of the error rate for on-time performance was that the drivers were arriving too early to pick-up passengers. Our window is 0 to 20 or 15 to 15, and when they are early, it still counts as a late trip. We had a total of 639 early trips, roughly 18%of the total late trips. It would have been about 93%.
ADJOURNMENT; John made the motion to adjourn, Kurt seconded it, all were in favor and the meeting was called at 10:57am.
SECRETARY’S NOTE: Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, these notes are submitted in abbreviated form. For full details of the meeting, a complete audio version of the meeting is available by contacting Adrian Aguilar at 661-295-6305.
