Between me and a fellow passenger at a Sprinter station this morning, we racked up over a dozen attempts at getting the ticket machines to accept our credit cards. Neither of us could pay our fare.
That experience reminded me that North County Transit District was the subject of two Grand Jury reports: one finding that the Sprinter’s ticket machines don’t work as often, or as well, as they’re reported to work, and the other finding that the agency provides only limited space for disabled riders.
At issue, the Grand Jury found, was that NCTD met only minimal state and federal standards for riders with disabilities on its Sprinter trains, which often meant that people with wheelchairs had to jostle for space with people who had bikes. The report recommended providing separate space for bike storage, and removing some seats to create additional area for disabled riders.
NCTD responded at the end of August, saying the Grand Jury needs to show more proof that there’s a problem.
“Over the course of the last fiscal year, NCTD has received a total of seven customer complaints related to concerns about alleged unsafe interactions or issues between bicycles and wheelchairs,” the agency wrote. “NCTD believes that the small number of complaints indicates that this is not a pervasive problem and is likely episodic and tied primarily to special events and heavy passenger loads when operating one versus two coupled SPRINTER trains.”
The agency would not modify cars, add signage and security cameras because the recommendations were not feasible or warranted, the response continued.
“NCTD will take steps to ensure SPRINTER Train Conductors focus more on the shared-space area during trips to ensure unsafe conditions do not arise,” it said.
The second report the Grand Jury produced found that the Sprinter’s ticket machines were failing more often than reported, and weren’t being fixed in a timely manner, causing people to miss trains or board without tickets.
To that, NCTD said: They are 16-year old machines that SANDAG put in place, and we’re working with San Diego Metropolitan Transit System to get a new system, but the existing ones aren’t as bad as you say.
A lot of the issue surrounds the use of credit cards at the machines.
NCTD says it has graphics and a video online showing how to get the machines to accept cards, and that it’s working on updating the software to reduce card-read errors. It agreed that the vendor who repairs the machines does not work all the hours the Sprinter operates, so there may be broken machines when the trains are running. It also said, though, that issues surrounding credit cards not being read are user errors, not technical ones.
Now, credit card machines are pretty ubiquitous these days, and I have worked in restaurants and have swiped thousands of credit cards. If an agency’s reader operates uniquely among its kind and requires a video showing people how to use it, maybe the problem is the reader, and not the user.
September 27, 2017
Voice of San Diego
By Ruarri Serpa
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