MATA Survey Excludes MATAplus

MATAplus Rider’s Voices Don’t Matter

By Christina Clift, MCIL Consumer Advocate
On Tuesday, March 27, 2018 members from MCIL attended MATA’s Board of Commissioners meeting in which information was presented from a recent survey of fixed route riders by Transpro.  The survey was conducted from mid-February through the beginning of March of this year.

The results of the survey give MATA and the public a data baseline to measure improvement.  The presentation highlighted five key areas that riders of MATA’s fixed route system identified as most important. They included on-time performance, cleanliness of vehicles, customer service, travel time on vehicles, and bus frequency.  

MATA’s scores were nothing to brag about and clearly demonstrate that there is more than enough room for improvement.  A Net Promoter Score or NPS is a management tool used to gage the loyalty and customer experience of a company’s customers.  It serves as an alternative to traditional customer service satisfaction tools and is used by two-thirds of the country’s fortune 500 businesses.   

MATA’s overall Net Promoter Score was 10 and the highest available score is 100.  Most transportation agencies have a NPS of 31.

But riders of MATA’s paratransit service were left out. I asked of both Mr. Rosenfeld and the Board of Commissioners why the critical baseline data does not include MATAplus.  

The same data that they collected from fixed route riders could have been collected from those who use the paratransit system. Mr. Rosenfeld stated that the frequency of future surveys will be based on available funding.  

So in the meanwhile MATAplus is left waiting, and there will be no similar baseline on which to judge progress for people with disabilities. MATA may be afraid that the results from such a survey of MATAplus riders would lower the NPS even further.  

This blatant exclusion from such an important tool shows that MATAplus and its riders aren’t treated equally and that our opinions don’t matter.  MCIL will continue to provide a voice for all MATA riders who have disabilities whether or not they use MATAplus or the fixed route. We will continue to advocate for our voices to be included in future surveys and therefore in MATA’s NPS.  

We will not be silenced by being excluded nor treated like second-class MATA customers.