Audit Report on Vendor Contracts with New York City Transit to Provide Access-A-Ride Services

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

This audit determined whether the New York City Transit Authority (NYCT) adequately monitored Access-A-Ride vendors’ compliance with certain key contract provisions. Access-A-Ride provides door-to-door transportation for people with disabilities who are unable to use public bus or subway service. Service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week (including holidays), throughout the five boroughs. While NYCT’s Paratransit Division administers the Access-A-Ride program, private carriers under contract with NYCT provide the service. During Calendar Year 2008, NYCT contracted with 14 private companies. (Contracts with three of these vendors were not renewed by NYCT for Calendar Year 2009.) In Calendar Year 2008, the total cost of the program for the 14 carriers was $242.8 million for approximately 5 million completed trips.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

The audit concluded that 6.3 percent of the 5.8 million assigned trips were no-shows. Otherwise, NYCT generally monitored the compliance of its Access-A-Ride vendors with certain key contract provisions. Our review of on-time performance reports generated by the ADEPT system found that these reports were generally accurate. We reviewed 448 trips for 50 routes and found that although vendor-recorded vehicle-arrival times, driver-recorded arrival times, and automatic vehicle locator system-recorded arrival times varied, the times were sufficiently similar so as not to affect the calculation of on-time performance. We also found that Access-A-Ride drivers had valid licenses that authorized them to drive Access-A-Ride vehicles. Furthermore, Access-A-Ride carriers were ensuring that its drivers complied with Article 19-A regulations.

However, NYCT’s monitoring of no-shows reported by Access-A-Ride vendors had significant deficiencies. The 14 NYCT Access-A-Ride vendors had 362,587 no-shows in Calendar Year 2008, or 6.3 percent of the 5.8 million assigned trips during this period. The numbers of no-shows and assigned trips are slightly understated because NYCT did not provide documentation showing these numbers for two carriers for February 2008. For the 5.8 million assigned trips, there were 346,638 late cancellations by customers in addition to the 362,587 no-shows.