27,000 Passenger Complaints Show Room for Improvement on Miami-Dade's Metrobus

Douglas Hanks shares the findings on an investigation by the Miami Herald into customer complaints about the Miami-Dade Metrobus system. Requesting all complaints from bus passengers since the start of 2014, Hanks reports that through July of 2015, "there were nearly 27,000 [complaints] registered via email, online and call center. That’s roughly 47 per day, offering the most detailed look available at what irks, enrages and horrifies the system’s 210,000 daily passengers."

Among the complaints are horror stories involving cockroaches, a driver eating out of a cup with a spoon while operating the bus, and a bus route that routinely arrives 45 minutes late to deliver one man to work.

The Miami-Herald has also created an interactive database of "Bus Gripes," where interested transit observers can sort through specific complaints and compare the rating achieved by each of the system's routes.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is up for re-election next year, "has pledged to usher in an era of cleaner and more efficient buses," according to Hanks. But critics of the mayor credit years of chronic underfunding for the current state of the system. Hanks also provides these details about Gimenez's goals for transit funding: "Gimenez restored Transit’s increase this year but has also pledged to end the agency’s current $100 million operating subsidy from transportation taxes by 2020. Backed by a county oversight board and other leaders who endorse the shift, Gimenez wants the operation subsidies spent on Transit projects included in the 2002 [sic] plan. The county’s budget forecasts hinge on an expanding economy should providing enough dollars in transit to make up for the lost sales tax money."

The article includes a lot more, in-depth reporting on the state of the system and the politics of transportation in Miami.