Vice President's Notes
Customers’ opinions of AAR service range from appreciation to frustration and anger. Everyone at Paratransit is well aware that there are instances of unsuccessful trips. We are working to reduce the problems. I use the word reduce because some problems are not within our control, such as high- volume traffic conditions, inclement weather, unexpected traffic detours, etc.
However, actions are underway to address problems often faced by customers. We are increasing the number of vehicles and carriers to improve AAR’s reliability and on-time performance. In addition, our scheduling program has been modified so that vehicles will deviate less from the overall direction of the route. This should result in shorter and more direct trips for our customers.
We want each trip to be performed in a safe, reliable and efficient manner. This can be accomplished with everyone’s cooperation and patience.
We’re placing a special poster in every AAR vehicle. It offers guidance on ways customers and drivers can work together to make everyone’s ride better.
We realize the outlay of cash for taxi service can be difficult for our customers. Therefore, we are making a commitment to reimburse customers, authorized to take taxicab service, within two weeks after we receive their taxi receipts.
No-Shows and Late Cancellations
Each day, a significant number of scheduled trips are classified as "no-shows" or "late cancellations"–trips that are scheduled but never completed. This hampers our ability to be efficient. We are making changes to be fair in our approach to discourage and minimize no-shows and late cancellations.
No-shows are not always the customer’s fault. Sometimes when a driver declares a no-show, we discover that the customer had called our office asking when the van is expected to reach the pick-up location.
We have begun to produce reports of no-shows to determine if each driver is performing appropriately. The carriers receive these reports monthly and interview drivers with high numbers of no-shows. Road supervision will monitor the performance of these drivers.
While we remain concerned about any customer violations, we are changing our policies to focus on excessive violations. We consider a customer to have excessive violations when he or she reserves seven or more trips in any month and 60 percent or more result in a no-show or late cancellation. As always, customers have the right to appeal before a decision is made to suspend them from AAR service. Suspensions are progressive and range from two weeks to three years depending on the frequency of excessive violations.
