Dispute
A dispute exists between Island Transit and long-time riders of Island Transit's former Route 2C. Island Transit, the "it" part of itod2csucks.com, is a Public Transit Benefit Area serving transit riders on the two islands of Island County in Washington State. Island Transit is funded through a countywide sales tax addon and by public grants.

The "od2c" part of itod2csucks.com is Island Transit's designator for their highly flawed version of "on demand" public-transit service. Truth be told, though the legal dispute is strictly between a group of former Route 2C riders on Camano Island and Island Transit management on Whidbey Island, one would be hard pressed to find anyone driving, riding, dispatching or connecting with ITOD 2C, with anything good to say about the service in it's present form.

I am Ramon Diego Diego and my investigation into this dispute has revealed that the dispatch supervisor responsible for the implementation of ITOD 2C has at best a tenuous, superficial undestanding of the system's supporting technology. This individual categorically denies there are any problems with ITOD 2C. "On Demand works great on Whidbey" he is fond of saying. And therein lies the crux of the matter. By definition, a complex system with multiple moving parts can not be fixed or tuned until those responsible for its operation recognize the problems. To summerize ITOD 2C's launch in formal engineering terms: Ah, Whidbey, we've had a problem.

Instead of designing, assembling and deploying an up-to-date working version of Demand Responsive Transit, the dispatch supervisor has phoned in a hacked rewrite of the Emperor's New clothes, casting himself in the role of the Emperor.

It is estimated that by the third week of operation Island Transit On Demand 2C had lost more than 50% of the ridership of the scheduled service it replaced.

As a model of on demand transit service, ITOD 2C is a fable and an operational failure. As such, it does indeed suck. Royally.

Route 2C History
For more than 20 years Island Transit has provided friendly, safe, reliable hourly transit service along a twenty-one mile loop on the South End of Camano Island.

Also known as the "East" bus, Route 2C was a flag route. Anyone desiring a ride could position themselves at any safe spot on the route and get a ride with just a wave of their hand. The degree to which Island Transit drivers and dispatchers would go to consistently get riders to their distination safely and on time is legendary.

Though a rider could get on and off 2C at any safe spot on the route, the primary mission of Route 2C was to get riders to Terry's Corner where they could make convenient connections to other Island Transit routes destined for the communities of Stanwood, Mount Vernon and Everett. Route 2C also connected with it's Camano Island counterpart, Route 1C, AKA the "West" bus.

Route 2C East side scheduled service was eliminated by Island Transit at the end of the day, 30 SEP 2023. Route 2C is no more. It was replaced with ITOD 2C which prioritizes Island wide paratransit riders and, with two hours advance booking and adequate "run availability", accepts "on demand" riders from the newly created Zone 2.

The 1C West bus still serves the more aflluent North End of Camano Island with dedicated hourly service.

How To Fix ITOD 2C
  • Procure or develop in-house, functioning route management software, matched and tuned to ITOD 2C requirements.
  • Procure or develop in-house, a customer facing app which meets the following basic requirements:
    1. All designated On Demand stops appear on the Pick Up and Drop Off selectors. The drop off or pickup point for a given booking is selected with a single tap or click.
    2. Only available Leave By and Arrive By times, in ten minute increments, shown on time selector. Times and dates in the past and during non-service hours do not appear. Time and date selected with two clicks.
    3. Self-serve app sign up with user verification by text or email.
    4. Option to register a personal flag stop if the designated-stop is more than 50 yards distance.
  • Make ITOD 2C a single bus based at Terry's Corner providing service only within Zone 2.
    • ITOD 2C departures are tightly coupled to the arrival of the scheduled buses, ie :40 after.
    • ITOD 2C only rolls when:
      • 1. There are East riders, heading down-island, present at Terry's Corner at :40 after.
      • Or
      • 2. There are riders at a Zone 2 route point, heading either direction, booked by :39 after.
    • If there are no down-island bound East riders at Terry's Corner or East bookings for that hour, ITOD 2C does not roll.
    • On any given departure, ITOD 2C rolls only within Zone 2 and only as far within Zone 2 as the furthest Zone 2 rider-drop or Zone 2 booking.
    • Paratransit jobs originating in Zone 2 are operated as pararatransit was before On Demand Service was implemented.
    • Paratransit pasengers within Zone 2, if present or booked per above, can be picked, dropped or transfered within Zone 2 by ITOD 2C, just as with scheduled service.
Summation

When ITOD 2C is fixed in accordance with the standards set forth above, it will become a modern, more efficent and more environmentally friendly version of the essential lifeline Route 2C was for twenty years. It will provide the same or better service to riders as was provided by Route 2C while at the same time reducing overall miles-driven-per-passenger and completely eliminating zero-passenger miles. ITOD 2C will no longer suck.

Bad trip on ITOD?
  • Send a message to The Man at Island Transit.
  • Correct a fact, spelling or grammer error on itod2csucks.com
  • Voice an opinion.
  • Write 500 words in the style of Jane Austen about the last time you had your heart broke. (The time before they cancelled Route 2C.)

This is the people's space. All submissions should be in the spirit of fixing ITOD 2C.

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And from any phone, anytime leave a voice message at 206.278.2801.

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Power to the people. Write on!

The Seven Fatal Flaws of ITOD 2C
  • No pickup or dropoff points to select from.
  • Dispatchers unaware when system rejects booking.
  • No alternative times offered on rejected bookings.
  • Two hour advance booking required.
  • No space available or standby matching.
  • No booking coordination with connecting scheduled service.
  • No system route information available through app.
  • Clearly designed for paratranist. Brain dead for on demand.

The on-demand bit of ITOD 2C is by default a spoke in a hub and spoke scheduled system. Terry's Corner is the hub with the Island Transit routes of Everett, Mount Vernon, Stanwood and West Camano Island. The rider service and route efficency of such a system demands appropriate software, finely tuned to the local sytstem requirements. The Ecolane software chosen to manage ITOD 2C is out-of-the-box, unmodified para transit which has no notion of interacting with on demand or scheduled service. As applied to ITOD 2C the software and hence the entire service is failing miserably.

Island transit has a long history of clumbsy, ineffective implementation of technology. The Route Match software that they run on their scheduled service is a constant distraction to drivers and dispatchers. I estimate that 40% of radio traffic on between drivers and dispatch has to do with Route Match software failures. And when Route Match is working on a given bus, boarding a single passenger requires up to 5 screen taps by the driver. The Route Match implementation is so flawed that after the five taps on the Route Match screen, the driver must click their stop passenger-count into a plastic abacus style counter, counts which they then record on a paper form and turn in at the end of each route. All of this when the

When Route Match was implmented one of the repersentations made by the vendor was that buses would have accurate location tracking every minute of every shift. As currently implemented, this is lie. Driver's radio requests to dispatch are asked "Where are you?". Pssengers inquiring as to where their bus is are told "Just a minute, I will call them and ask them." Furthemore drivers are not given the benefit of GPS navigation supervision. A driver mistakenly heading out on the wrong segment of their daily route assignments can travel to that stop 30 miles away without Route Match alerting the driver or dispatch that their on the wrong route segment. Island Transit routes serving Camano Island typically have their drivers rotating through three or more route segements througout the day and days of the week. A driver can easily find them selves doing two town runs, followed by a West run, a Mount Vernon run and ending their day with a Express run. The next day they might do para transit all day. Every driver in the system has a story about the day the were supposed run a particular route segment and inadvertenly ran another. By contrast modern GPS based logistics software will not let a package delivery driver close out the delivery of a 12 ounce package delivery on the wrong door step however as implemented by Island Transit, Route Match will blissfully allow a driver drive a 32,000 GVW bus 30 miles in the wrong direction without alerting the driver or dispatch-to-driver. Passenger aircraft pilots have multiple levels of technology and a copilot to help them safely transport their passengers. Island Transit demands their drivers use flawed, incompetenly managed sofware which instead of helping them, distracts them from safely operating their route.

The same lack of driver navigation aid applies to the Ecolane paratransit software that has been implented on ITOD 2C. A driver who inadvertandly drives to the wrong location for a para transit passenger pickup can tap "Arrived" and wait through the entire pickup window without the Ecolane software alerting the driver or dispatch that they are at the wrong location. By contrast, Google Maps navigation will start protesting if you as much as pull into Starbucks during a point to point trip.

If their is a single reason for my aggresive challenge to ITOD 2C it is Island Transits managment's history of hap hazard, amateurish implmentation of technology and high tolerence for mediocrity and failure in their information systems ecostructure. It is an ongoing tale of broken systems that are never fixed. When it comes to essential operations software in a public safety based context a legitimate and professional organization would be immediately holding the feet of their vendor's and project manager's to a roaring fire until the system performed as promised. Not so with Island Transit. From their scheziophreniuc Website that fails to clearly provide route and schedule information to route software that endangers instead of helps their drivers the story of Island Transit effectively using technology of technology to track and improve the safety and efficency of their system is a fairytale. To borrow a punchline from Elaine Venise on the Seinfield televison show: "Fake, fake, fake, fake."

Riders who for twenty years caught their bus from a flag stop at the end of their driveway or street must now travel a rural road, in some cases more than a mile, without sidewalks or street lights to get to and from their new designated stop. And for no reason as Island Transit’s Ecolane route management software accommodates “home” stops by default.
  • No guarantee of bike accomodation.
  • A single para wheelchair will deny a bike rider.
Though a promised feature of the software, there are no alerts to the driver or dispatch when the driver is off route or at the wrong pickup location. When drivers make radio calls to dispatch for navigation or arrival assistance, the first question dispatch has to ask is "Where are you?"
Though Island Transit claims to have paratransit riders sharing ITOD 2C "on demand", they are in fact prioritizing paratransit riders to the extent of taking both ITOD 2C buses outside of Zone 2 to pickup and drop off paratransit passengers as far as Stanwood and beyond. An "on demand" ride who is only allowed to travel within Zone 2 can not "share" a ride when the bus is outside of Zone 2. Additionally there are regular cases where a passenger arriving at Terry's Corner from Stanwood on the 3C scheduled service is taken back into Stanwood so the ITOD 2C bus can pick up a paratransit passenger in Stanwood. On more than one occasion the Stanwood paratransit pickup was across the street from where the "on demand" rider started a half-hour earlier.

When the Island Go "app" refuses a booking due to "run availability" dispatch is not alerted. If dispatch were aware of failed bookings in real time they could make a sanity check of the schedule and possibly fit the ride in. Currently, as Camano Island manager Troy Fair characterizes it "The brain controls the system and we just have to do what it says." (I know, it sounds like a line from a 1950's science fiction movie but is an accurate quote.)

Knowing the "when, where and how many" of booking attempts refused by the app would allow Island Transit tune the system to maximize both it's efficency and it's service to riders.

All of this is on top of the fact that when the "app" refuses a booking, it gives no indication or suggestion to the user as to when a ride might be available.