And then there's the safety issue.
For one thing, the drivers say, federal regulations for bus drivers limited shifts to 15 hours. After that, they say, a driver was required to take at least nine hours off.
Victor J. Palagano III
Jim McCubbin (left) and Bob Bean, both officers with the local union representing rail operators, say they have serious concerns.
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Not so on the trains, they say.
One operator told me that 16-hour shifts are relatively common. (ACI denies it, saying long shifts would be possible only if operators are accepting overtime work, which is optional.) Another said that operators have been asked to take on 12-hour shifts, then sleep in their cars for just two or three hours before reporting back to duty for more work.
Do operators have the right to refuse a shift if they're too sleepy to operate the vehicle? ACI says yes; operators I spoke to aren't so certain.
"Who knows if you can be terminated for saying no?" one operator asked. "On the bus side, if you said no, it was no . . . Here, they don't relieve you."
The shifts can be grueling.
Originally, the route from Mesa to northwest Phoenix was supposed to take just 58 minutes. But with trains sharing the road with cars, bikes, and even strollers — not to mention the Valley's incredibly slow-moving pedestrians — that proved impossible. The route time swelled to 70 minutes.
But Metro Light Rail recently decreed that drivers must get it down to 67 minutes.
Drivers are supposed to adhere to speed limits, but cheating is the best way to make up crucial minutes, along with forgoing all but the most necessary bathroom breaks at the end of the line.
"You're given 15 seconds to load new passengers on at a station," one driver told me. "Well, people just pile on and you're supposed to pick them all up — but you'll have to answer at the end why you're late when they don't climb on fast enough."
Problems of timing, however, pale in comparison with some of the crap operators have to deal with.
I mean that literally. Alas.
On the buses, the drivers tell me, there are strict policies for biohazards. If someone bleeds on the bus, or vomits, or urinates, that bus is almost immediately taken out of service.
Naturally, you can't just do that with a train. There are tracks, after all. You can't switch trains in the middle of, say, Central and Camelback.
But the problem, operators say, is there's no policy for handling these all-too-common issues. Because of the way drivers' seats are situated, they typically won't even see a bodily fluid problem until passengers bring it to their attention.
At that point, they're supposed to radio it in, but ACI has no system in place for what to do next. Operators haven't even been given yellow "caution" tape to rope off the offending area — despite begging the company to provide it. Nor have they been given signs to notify passengers of a contaminated car. Typically, operators say, passengers have kept piling right into the contaminated area before a cleaning crew shows up.
And even when a gross-out car reaches the end of the line, they say, it isn't automatically switched out for one of the spares waiting there.
Several operators regaled me with the story of a middle-aged drunk man who defecated all over himself while snoozing in a rail car.
The car was kept online for another two trips to and from Mesa, they say — even as passengers complained bitterly about the smell.
"There's vomit and feces, and they don't care that it's hazardous," one operator told me. "They tell you, 'You just keep going.'"
ACI tells me it's in the process of issuing operators yellow tape. Why, I pressed, has it taken four months to get to this point?
"It wasn't an issue until now," says Ron McKay, ACI's general manager. "There's only been a complaint recently."
It's nice to know the company is now being responsive. But, really, is anyone shocked to learn that shit happens?
The Boston-based company "managing" the operators here got the gig by submitting a low bid. ACI's five-year, $27 million proposal was a whopping $3 million below Metro Light Rail's expectations.
ACI is new to Phoenix and new to local politics. Founded by executives at Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority 19 years ago, ACI runs the light-rail line in Puerto Rico. McKay, its general manager, helped open the one in Houston four years ago. Surprisingly, the company has only the most barebones Internet presence and hasn't earned much in the way of press, for good or bad.
I suspect that ACI didn't realize just how difficult managing our rail line would be. A memo obtained through a public-records request shows that Metro Light Rail is about to give the company another $150,000 to hire more drivers and thereby reduce overtime; union officials are convinced more cash is on the way. It's the classic low-bid strategy: Win the job by promising a low fee, then make up the difference in "contract amendments" when no one is watching.
The problem is, plenty of people are watching. The rail operators say they feel betrayed by ACI. And the union officers are angry to the point of apoplexy. Bob Bean, president of the union's local chapter, calls one ACI executive "the biggest compulsive liar I have ever met in my life" — and urges me to print it.
