Dial-a-ride delivery doubts

What's going wrong with London’s Dial-a-ride service, asks Paul Carter

In London, as elsewhere in the country, Dial-a-Ride, a free door-to-door transport service for disabled, older and vulnerable people, is widely acknowledged to be a lifeline for many of its 49,000 users who are unable to access buses, trains or the Underground.

But scratch the surface and things aren’t as happy as they seem. Investigations by the London Assembly (LA) have highlighted a number of worrying issues about the Dial-a-Ride operation.

Concerns began to be raised in December when the LA passed a motion “deploring the standard of service delivered to elderly and vulnerable Londoners” by Dial-a-Ride.

Investigations by the LA’s Transport Committee have since uncovered areas of concern around availab­ility, efficiency, flexibility and punctuality.

Many of the problems appear to stem from a new centralised booking and scheduling system, which was fully introduced from September 2008. Since the change, users have reported problems, including being refused journeys they have made regularly in the past, inflexibility of bookings, and inefficiency.

One user told the committee that Dial-a-Ride wanted to send two separate minibuses 30 minutes apart for people living at the same address. Another said that it was often a case of “four people, four vans”.

Valerie Shawcross, LA Member for Lambeth & Southwark, and chair of the Assembly’s Transport Committee, said that many Assembly Members had received direct complaints about the service.

“It’s not that anyone has concerns with the drivers or the quality of the service, it’s more about the phone centre and the scheduling,” she said.

Faryal Velmi is director of Transport for All, a group that represents the interests of accessible transport users in London. She says that Dial-a-Ride is a vital service that helps facilitate independent living but she feels it needs “immediate action.”

“The problem is that the scheduling system that was supposed to revolutionise the service hasn’t performed and hasn’t worked.

“For those people who can get through, and get a trip to take them where they want to go, it’s a good service, but for many people it takes ages to get through, and they often have to wait around and be flexible.

“The service is increasingly not meeting the demands of people.”

Following a public session with Dial-a-Ride users, Mrs Shawcross wrote a letter to the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, asking for clarification on what is being done to improve the service for disabled Londoners.

The letter, seen by Disability Now, requests that the Mayor instruct Transport for London (TfL) to provide a written response by June 2009.

A spokeswoman for TfL said: “We realise that there have been difficulties with the performance of Dial-a-Ride and will take the concerns our customers have onboard.

“We will be reviewing the concerns raised by the Transport Committee and will be responding to them as soon as possible and will update them on our performance."