TRAX driver gets it right, follows ISO customer care standard in waiting for disabled rider.

ISO 9001 presumes a level of customer care you do not see often these days, anywhere, even if it is not 'written in stone' in the standard. That is why the matter I saw today was truly above and beyond the usual for a UTA employee.

I was just getting off a northbound TRAX train at 78th South just about 1225pm. As I was readying to leave the platform, I saw a man with an old manual walker, with no wheels, trying to make his way up the ramp to get on the train.

Now walkers these days have small wheels, which allow one to move a little more quickly, most of these are now black rather than what this one was, which was the old silver type with no wheels which the user has to pick up to move it a few inches forward at a time.

I immediately turned around and signaled to the driver he had a disabled passenger trying to reach him, and he waited. He got out and once the passenger got to the top of the platform, he helped him get into the train. He then left, it took just over a minute to do this.

Now given the previous track record involving TRAX drivers outright leaving people with walkers, I think a previous complaint did some good. Someone may have retrained the drivers to be more sensitive to disabled riders needs, I've written about the issue before on this blog, and have discussed it with UTA customer concerns people and their ADA coordinator, and it all seems to have worked.

UTA now needs to make this a regular policy and part of the customer care documentation and training for ALL of its TRAX drivers, and do the same for Frontrunner drivers, so that everyone is on the same page to help all passengers who may need it even if it takes an extra minute. By doing so, it will raise the perception among many regarding its ISO 9001 accreditation that it is a good thing, not a bad thing as many have now following the 2007 Salt Lake County redesign fiasco, which they still have to resolve properly, and until then that still will hang over their ISO accreditation like a black cloud.

This caused a minor, but in the end insignificant, backup on 7720 South, but given how fast trains move through the intersecting street anyway (this is nowhere near like the wait for freight trains), this was but a small bother time-wise, and if everyone waiting for the train to go through so the gates would lift up knew the real issue as described here, they would have no problem waiting the extra time they had to today.