EDITORIAL – The City of Madera receives federal grant monies to provide an hourly bus route to the Madera Community College. You would think students would have no issues getting to the college campus that the powers that be decided to build two miles outside Madera. Unfortunately, you would be wrong, as already two weeks into the school year, and the city has failed to staff the bus for the college route.
Now when I say the city has failed, I mean that a vendor out of Dallas, Texas (MV Transportation) has not only been unable to hire enough drivers to cover the scheduled bus routes and dial-a-ride service, their offices in Dallas are closed. No one is there to answer questions. In addition, the local bus office is also closed to the general public, and the city employee who oversees the contract with MVT and compliance for the grants, David Huff, refuses to leave his house and work out of his office in city hall because of the pandemic.
Huff's solution to the lack of buses has been to reroute students to what they call "Demand Response Service," basically the old "dial a ride" system. Students have been advised to contact the City of Madera's Transit Office when they arrive at the bus stop on Route 2 or 3, and a driver will be sent to bring you to campus. David Huff says, "This method has been used successfully in the past."
What Mr. Huff didn't say is that wait times could be up to two hours for the students at the campus. We tested the system on Tuesday and called two hours before the desired pickup time and found that even with that much notice to the city, the wait time was still over a half-hour to an hour. Just thirty minutes later, the wait time was over an hour and a half.
Meanwhile, the city bus routes to the county welfare office, Madera Community Hospital, and even the California Department of Motor Vehicles are running without issues. It is as if the city is saying they would rather their citizens remain on welfare than get an education and better their lives.
When the city grant writers drafted their proposal for a federal transportation grant, the distance from the city to the college played a factor in the amounts of funds we received from the grant; for the town to "cancel" the service has to be a violation of the terms of the grant. I mean, the County of Madera's bus service, which a vendor operates out of Fresno, is still providing services to the college.
Maybe the city has the wrong vendor?
The bus service for the city of Madera is less than desirable. Large areas of the town are entirely ignored based on the makeup of the population. In addition, the bus stops are not even close to complying with the American's With Disabilities Act, not to mention the services on the bus coming under scrutiny by the city's own ADA Advisory Council. Just two months ago, the council raised questions about stop announcements on the bus for the hard of hearing and visually impaired riders.
Why is it that the closest bus to Madera's Lincoln Elementary School area is over a mile away on Schnoor Avenue? Why is it a quarter to a half-mile walk to many bus stops on the city's three routes for nearly everyone in town? The city's website says this about their service, "Travel conveniently from neighborhoods to shopping centers, local schools, medical offices, and work sites on the Madera Metro fixed-route transit services."
The buses don't travel to the Save Mart Shopping Center on Howard Road; heck, they don't even drop riders off at Walmart anymore. The purpose of this editorial is to show they are ignoring the community college, but why don't they have a bus stop for Madera High School when they have two for Madera South and another for Torres High School. Don't get me started on the elementary schools and junior high schools that Metro ignores. There is a nice bus stop in front of the new welfare departments and the empty old welfare department. There is a bus stop in front of the retirement apartments on South P Street and Olive but none in front of Ceder Creek on the Westside. As for medical offices, if you are a patient at Darin Camarena or the Madera Community Hospital, you are set, but if your doctor is somewhere else in Madera, you are out of luck. Here is the point, if you are going there, the buses probably are not.
Why is it when we attempt to do good things in Madera, they so often turn out only halfway successful? We outsource these services to companies that have no local investment in our community, and they fill positions with what I can only say is incompetent management. The ‘Cowboys’ from MV Transportation cared so much about this issue they have refused to return even one phone call or respond to just one email.
The general manager of the City of Madera's Transit Office is Annie Self, who has been with the company in Madera since 2018. The previous job she left to become GM in Madera was as a dispatcher for Smitty's Towing. Before that, she was a receptionist for a local solar company and a cashier for Tractor Supply Hardware. So obviously, she is more than qualified to run the bus service for the city of Madera.
I have had two conversations with her about the lack of ADA bus stops about two years ago. The first conversation was about the one bus stop in my neighborhood which was a problem because the drivers drop you off at a flooded area of Schnoor Avenue (with no plans to move the stop or fix the drainage). And now, our discussion is about this issue with the college. During both conversations, I felt like the lady couldn't care less about these issues. She is responsible for hiring drivers and had all summer to fill this position, but does not seem to feel it holds any priority. All are valid points, even without bringing up the fact that the City is receiving federal grant funds specifically for providing this service to the campus. Who is going to answer for losing those funds because they were not spent as intended? Meanwhile, the Madera County Connection is staffing their college bus and hasn't missed a day.
I even asked her why she hasn't contacted Madera Unified School District, which employs many part-time bus drivers that could quickly fill a shift or two for the city. There was no response. Then I asked her if she has ever driven a bus, to which she was quick to tell me how long she drove. My next question was, "Why don't you get behind the wheel and man the college bus until someone is hired?'
That's when the phone disconnected.
If you have any Service Improvement Requests for the Madera Metro Service please call David Huff at the City of Madera (559) 661-3693 or email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
