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Trying
to soothe light-rail gripes By
Sean Holstege The
Arizona Republic
Almost
every day since light-rail construction started a year ago,
somebody has lodged a formal complaint.
Daily headaches are expected from a 20-mile-long project where
busy Valley boulevards get torn up to make way for rail. Water
cutoffs, rerouted traffic and machinery noise will inevitably
irritate people.
The disruption is testing not only residents' nerves but also
a rare plan for preventing and solving the problems. The goal
is to stop minor headaches from ballooning into migraines.
Valley Metro Rail,
or Metro, hired on-call community workers to tamp down
problems day or night. It set up panels of affected business
owners to evaluate the work of light-rail contractors and
complaints against them. Metro pays its contractors bonuses
for responding to the public.
The system aims to keep merchants and the public from souring
on the notion of trains in streets.
Metro says its aspirin works like a charm most of the time,
and dozens of business owners say they appreciate the extra
effort.
Critics, including some merchants and residents, say that too
many complaints fall on deaf ears and that panel reviews are
often more show than substance. Many people don't know whom to
call when they have a complaint.
No complaint-volume standard exists for rail projects; success
is measured on the quickness and quality of responses.
Range
of complaints
Complaints funnel
in to Metro from a public hotline, the agency's community
workers and resident calls to City Hall or a utility company.
They run the gamut.
• A senior center resident at the Westward Ho got hosed
down by construction workers after flipping them an obscene
gesture.
• The water and then the phone service were cut off at
a
Camelback Road
apartment complex over a three-week period.
• A water cutoff to restaurants in
Papago
Park
Business
Center
forced Starbucks to close its doors and send employees home at
noon.
• Sports fans griped about having to walk through
construction sites to get to
Arizona
State
University
football games.
Solution
plan
Metro borrowed its
construction problem-solving plan from
Salt Lake City
. There, merchants suffered during construction of the initial
light-rail line, but their experience improved after officials
set up community advisory boards, or CABs, to oversee work on
a later extension.
Here, a CAB panel meets monthly to evaluate each of the five
major contracts for building the line. Metro picked volunteers
from interested people who own property, work or live within
half a mile of the future track. Council members and city
managers in
Phoenix
,
Tempe
and
Mesa
reviewed the list of about 95 names.
To motivate the contractors, Metro reserved $2.5 million for
bonuses. It is small compared with the $1.5 million
Salt
Lake
offered on a 1˝-mile extension, but officials say it works.
Contractors are eligible for a share proportional to the miles
of line they're constructing. The CABs score them monthly on
how responsive they are to problems beyond the expected
minimum. The lower the score, the smaller the bonus.
So far, all the contractors have gotten high scores, averaging
95 out of 100. Metro has paid out $616,000 in bonus money, or
88 percent of what has been available to date.
Nearly every complaint filed this year in which a light-rail
contractor was at fault was resolved to the satisfaction of
the person who flagged the problem, the reports say.
The exception is in downtown
Phoenix
and areas just east along Washington and Jefferson streets.
There the contractor, Archer Western Contractors, has been
averaging an 83, and a quarter of this year's complaints
remain unresolved. The complexity of work and density of
people complicate the downtown effort.
What
works
Howard Steere, who
manages Metro's CAB program, said the program keeps
contractors on their toes.
"It has given us a way to ensure that as issues come up,
we have a venue to say, 'You haven't done such a good job,'
or, 'Continue the good work,' " Steere said.
When contractors kept hitting utility lines along
Washington Street
, CAB panelists wanted to know why. It turned out the same
backhoe operator was at fault for a string of accidents. He
was fired.
Kevin Mattingly sits on the panel overseeing work downtown and
has filed complaints.
"They are attentive," Mattingly said. "They
truly are chasing this bonus money."
Kiewit Western Co. put in crash barriers, not just
cones, and custom-built steel ramps so wheelchairs could board
buses safely at temporary stops. Archer Western bought a
high-pressure water cleaner to remove excess dust on
sidewalks.
The construction teams are bound by contract to hire
community-relations people. One went beyond the specs and
created a Web site specific to its section of track.
At the heart of the public outreach program are Metro's
line-section coordinators, who warn residents and businesses
of upcoming disruptions and tamp down problems.
One, Gary Flunoy, works in east
Phoenix
and parts of
Tempe
. He drops a dime or a spot visit on many businesses there, so
he even knows the quirky menu and door greeting at a
Tempe
grill.
Jerry Greening, a CAB member and manager at Thronwood
Furniture Manufacturing Inc., has a loading dock for 20
big-rigs to haul furniture. With one way in or out, a
construction detour could cripple a day's work, so Greening
worked with the contractor and neighboring businesses to
ensure goods can get to and from the firms. Businesses clear
parking and contractors adjust detours.
He says his problems go away with one call to Flunoy.
The teamwork has side benefits: Construction crews buy coffee,
cigarettes or sodas from the stores or fix apartment gates
they haven't broken.
What
doesn't work
Along Washington
and Jefferson streets, about 120 property owners formed the
United Business Council, which meets weekly to discuss its
treatment at the hands of light rail.
The Sterling International Hotel and its attorney John Miranda
are the driving force behind the group. Miranda attends the
monthly CAB meeting and is unimpressed.
"This bonus is just a public-relations fraud to show
people the city is monitoring the contracts. It's
eyewash," he said.
He reached that conclusion after sending e-mails about traffic
hazards near
24th Street
that he says went unheeded. An unscheduled utility cutoff also
forced Sterling Hotel guests to cancel reservations or leave.
Gus Murphy, who owns an abandoned lot on
Adams Street
, complained that contractors were trespassing when they piled
construction materials on his property. Ultimately, Metro told
him light rail had nothing to do with it. His complaint
doesn't appear in official logs.
"People don't know who to call, and if you call light
rail, they cover it up," Murphy said.
Others say the same. Downtown post office employee Chuck Jones
called for months to complain about trash and hazards in front
of the office. He still is not satisfied with what was done.
Going
forward
As Metro delves
into the heart of the $1.4 billion construction job,
complaints have risen and CAB panels have gotten stingier with
the bonuses they hand out.
Metro says its aspirin is dulling the pain, but it also knows
it has almost 900 days left of headaches and commotion before
the service opens in 2008.
Said CAB manager Steere: "I'm getting gray hairs from all
these line-section meetings because of all the issues. Are we
capturing all the complaints? I think we are. Are we
documenting everything? I think so."
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