It was not her first bad experience with Access — there had been plenty of times when nobody at the understaffed call center picked up the phone, when her bus ride took her on long detours, when she got dropped off more than an hour early for an appointment or was picked up late to go home. But missing the party at the bowling alley in White Center last year really stung.

“I’d scheduled the ride the day before my grandson’s birthday, but they never came to pick me up,” said Williams. “I’m the matriarch of the family and I’m not there and it’s not right.”

The 1990 federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that government agencies provide equal access to public transportation. Paratransit serves people who cannot ride regular buses or trains by allowing them to book shuttle service that picks them up at their origin and takes them to their destination, rather than from bus stop to bus stop. Access uses passenger vans that accommodate 1-12 people and 2-4 wheelchairs to provide $1.75 rides to those who qualify.

Like most transit agencies, Metro pays private companies to provide Access service on a contract basis. First Transit currently does customer service and dispatch, and Transdev and Solid Ground provide the rides. Metro spends about $61 million annually to provide 900,000 rides to about 8,000 riders throughout King County.

The ADA mandates that paratransit service must be comparable to its “fixed-route” equivalent. In other words, it must provide service to anywhere bus, streetcar or light rail goes in the county and do so in about the same amount of time a regular transit trip would take. But, as riders and advocates have been pointing out for years and as a 2017 report by the King County Auditor makes abundantly clear, Access often falls short of that comparable standard.

Riders are picked up excessively late, dropped off more than an hour early at their destination, trips take excessively long, the websites and call centers are difficult for non-English speakers to navigate, the service has higher operating costs than the national average and more, according to the auditor's report. It also said in the current system, there’s little disincentive for the contractors when they fail to meet guidelines and, because they’re paid by the hour, even incentive for taking excessively long trips.

“I’m talking about being ridden around the bus for two hours,” said Williams. “I’ve seen people on dialysis that are on the bus for two hours. They need to go straight home. They’re hungry and cold.” After missing the birthday party, Williams organized a group of about 10 riders to raise their issues directly to Metro.

Coupled with the work of advocates and the auditor’s report, the agency took notice.

“At Metro, we took the auditor’s report and what we heard from consumers very seriously and have taken steps to address that,” said Chrissy Russillo, Metro’s Access managing director.