The City Council Transportation Committee is moving forward with plans to audit the Handi-Van program.
But the committee also agreed to a request to delay the start of the audit to allow the impact of planned improvements to be assessed.
The committee voted unanimously Thursday to advance Resolution 14-69, which calls on the city auditor to perform a comprehensive management and performance audit of the city’s para-transit service in response to a chronic series of complaints by users about inefficiency and slow service.
Rose Pou, a Kaimuki resident, said she and other Handi-Van riders have complained about the same problems for years. "It hasn’t gotten any better," Pou said.
Council Transportation Chairman Breene Harimoto said he introduced the resolution as the result of "many, many, many issues over many, many, many years."
Roger Morton, president and general manager of Handi-Van operator Oahu Transit Services, and city Transportation Services Director Michael Formby both said they will abide by, and even welcome, an audit.
Formby acknowledged that improvements have not come as quickly as he’d hoped during his first 14 months in office. "We haven’t been able to affect the level of change we wanted to see but part of it is because the solutions are more complicated than I originally thought,"he said.
He asked that seven policy changes be allowed to kick in before the audit begins, saying that it will take until October to fully install real-time scheduling software. Other improvements include more stringent penalties for late cancellations, shortening the period a passenger can book a reservation and giving agencies that frequently transport people with disabilities the responsibility to do it themselves with federally subsidized vans, thus freeing up more Handi-Vans.
Donald Sakamoto, head of the advocacy group Citizens for a Fair ADARide, said after the meeting he is not opposed to a short postponement of the audit. The city transportation agency has seen improvement under Formby, Sakamoto said. He added, "Hopefully, OTScan get its act together."