I have had a couple of incidents, including tonight, where UTA has made a needed stop change, but did not leave anything at the old stop after the sign was moved to the new location, to inform all riders that the stop has been moved, sometimes as much as nearly a block over.
The first incident happened in April, prior to a change day when they had built the MAX shelter at 56th West and 35th South eastbound. There was a stop just west of the 7-Eleven to the west of 56th West, and to add to the confusion the privately-owned bench company had little notice (in fact the bench is still there but no stop).
No one was told that the stop would move, at least some notice before and after notification would have helped.
The second incident happened tonight, August 1, at 630pm. At Sandhill Road and the middle entrance to Wal-Mart (not the one by the light) there had been a stop southbound as recently as four days ago. Due to some issues involving the shoulder, and by request of alot of people including the disabled, me included, they had moved it to just south of the Wal-Mart light.
But again, nothing left behind to tell passengers to go and wait. There was little time to move to the new stop, the previous stop in the order north of there was across University Parkway at the UVU stop.
That failure to notice a discontinued stop location does not follow transit industry best practices. Almost all agencies of which I am aware put something at the stop to say where to go to catch the bus. UTA used to, but now fail to follow this national standard, and it is part of ISO to keep the customer informed, and ensure passengers who may not know of the change as sudden as it may have to be at some times (often due to construction), then I do not see them really caring about the customer.
The best practices for this are to.
1. If able to, about two weeks before a stop is to be moved, place a notice (paper or plastic) on the UTA-owned sign pole indicating when the stop will be moved and to where.
2. If unable to due to sudden matters like construction, remove the actual flag sign, and then place a notice to direct passengers to where the new stop will be, or if temporary, where that will be and for how long if known (even that is not always possible but understood if not).
3. After a permanent stop move has been made effective, remove the stop marker flags, but leave the pole with the notice up for two weeks after the change, that is considered satisfactory to virtually all riders. Then after the two weeks, remove all equipment related to the stop that UTA owns.
This will ensure a better relationship between the rider and company, reduce incident calls where customers have complaints, and save time and costs for UTA to handle complants, supervisors to talk to drivers, etc. It will also make ISO 9001 look more attractive, and preserve the image of being accredited by ISO as a quality endorsed system.
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2 comments:
We need to start Asking: What is UTA doing to ENCOURAGE MOTORISTS TO take the BUS, leave their VEHICLES at HOME and HELP out our ENVIRONMENT?
UTA needs to get ACCESSIBLE VANS and SMALL BUSES to go into NEIGHBORHOODS to take INDIVIDUALS to the MAIN BUS ROUTES.
We also need to ASK: Is our TRANSIT SYSTEM, CONVENIENT,FREQUENT and AFFORDABLE for all CITIZENS?
GAS PRICES have SKY ROCKET. UTA should not be GOUGING RIDERS with FARE INCREASES.
UTA needs to work on BARRIER FREE, BENCHES and SHELTERS and also INCREASE the FREQUENCY of BUSES.
Tammi, this will help alot if UTA was more proactive in promoting themselves, even the recent ads are self-serving and look like they were poorly written and shot.
Having worked the local 'Liken' series of movies, I can say that although those were not Hollywood quality, they still were alot better than the present UTA ads, the new ads look way too amateurish.
Sure that might have been the intent, but if one wants to look amateurish, they need to do it better than that. It can be done right, but they 'shot it all wrong, they see it all week, it's {their) favorite funny movie, it will come back to {them}. (Donald Fagen).
First, get half hour or hourly service to the far south valley and North Utah County and some eastside neighborhoods in Bountiful, where only FastBus service (usually 'stripers') run.
Second, reduce the fares back to pre-July levels. Gas has gone down, and oil is now at pre-summer levels, in fact is at the lowest price this year, partly as a result of the Lehman collapse.
And as noted before, create more professional, customer centric ad campaigns.
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