A GoLink Driver Shares Her Story

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Introduction

As part of our initiative to find new ways to capture and elevate mobility on-demand (MOD) drivers’ voices, we are pleased to share the perspective of Shetera Carroll, a driver for Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s (DART) GoLink.

DART created GoLink in 2019 as a first/last mile solution as part of the Mobility on Demand Sandbox program. You can learn more about this project’s development here. Since then, GoLink has expanded to more zones in the Dallas metropolitan area. Given the multiple service areas for GoLink on-demand service, the role of the drivers is fundamental to make sure this integral part of the DART system remains reliable and successful.

Shetera’s presentation was originally part of the January 2023 Mobility Innovation Collaborative Quarterly Meeting

Shetera’s Story

Transcript

Alvaro Villagran

Welcome everybody to our Mobility innovation collaborative all-grantee quarterly meeting for this quarter. My name is Alvaro Villagran. I am the Director of Federal Programs at the Shared-Use Mobility Center, and I will be moderating and emceeing today’s meeting. It is a pleasure to have you all here with us. So moving on into today’s meeting, here is the agenda. It is included in the calendar invite for those of you who cannot see the slides here. We’re going to start in a couple of minutes with our main session for today. It is “Insights on Mobility-on-Demand Services from a Driver’s Perspective.” This is a session that we tried to put together for the workshop we were planning last fall and we are very happy and excited that we are able to make it happen in a virtual setting today and very thankful for the participation of the three speakers that are going to be sharing their experience with us.

So as I’m going to be welcoming our three speakers for today, I want to make a very quick comment about the reason why we put together this session. As many of you know we usually talk about on-demand services and microtransit, we hear from vendors, we hear from planners, we hear from the agencies, we try to capture some of the riders’ feedback, we felt that the operator side of the story was missing here. So we made a deliberate effort to try to bring that voice in here from the everyday life of the people who are providing the service and driving and interacting with the passengers and on an in-person basis and dealing with the changes in technology and driving the vehicles. We think that this is going to be a very informative and productive conversation. So before moving forward I want to thank you once again Charlene, Shanghai, Shetera for making the time to join us today. We know that driver shortage is real, we know that your time is more valuable than ever, and having you making time to join us today for this conversation is definitely appreciated and valued so thank you very much. So let’s move on to the third speaker for today, and I’m going to be moving to a more urban setting this time. And so Shetera Carroll is joining us from from DART in Dallas.

Shetera Carroll

Hi everyone. I’m Shetera Carroll and I’ve been here on the platform for quite a bit of time. I’ve been doing Paratransit to microtransit for about 21 years now, and my everyday issue on that is that, you know, dealing with – I know y’all asked us on on how we deal with the passengers and how we come to face reality with deal with the everyday issues with them. W have a very big fleet of vehicles that we use, as well as the tablets as everyone. We also use handheld phones as well that they pass out to us a lot. And my deal with the technology of it is that every day we log in, sometimes it goes down on us and comes back up on us, to where sometimes we use the phone to log in to get our everyday sculpture of what we have to do. They download things on us. We pick up – we can do two at a time, but sometimes they drop five or six of them on us. And also, with the vehicle we have we are able to transport that many at one time. We take them to their doctor’s appointments on demand when they call for a ride, we pick some up, we take some to the grocery stores, we take some to their doctor’s appointments. And just like Mr. Elliott said, when we take you to the grocery store, you have to bring on as much as you can carry and sit in your lap or on the floor beside you. And yes we do get out and assist, because like he said as well, there’s not all the time they can get up on our vehicles alone and by themselves. 

I’m here every day. We get out to the areas. We service most of the surrounding cities of Dallas, like urban Plano, you know. We service the Paratransit side. We have zones we actually do every day. And our drivers go to each zone; we have to be there at a certain time. And our zones have expanded to midnight now because – most of them were going to eight o’clock but now it’s midnight. So we do a lot of areas where there’s a lot of houses, apartments. We get in there; we interact with them; we talk to them. They let us know, some of them, let us know that we are their only transportation. They don’t have transportation, some of them. Some of them do, but they really park-and-ride. Or like with the paratransit side, those we mostly pick up and, you know, take them to dialysis, different hospital appointments. And the GoLink side, actually anyone could take that, you don’t just have to have a handicap to take that. 

It’s just something I love doing. I love people. I love what I do. Of course it should show; I’ve been doing it for 21 years. It can be a challenge. The technology can be a challenge, because like I say, sometimes it’s up and down. And when it’s up and down we always have a backup plan, which would be a handheld, because we have the tablets. Also like Miss Charlene, we have the same tablets. Sometimes, it may have a difficult technology problem on the inside to where we go to the phone and we use those. We can also log in and it brings back down our day-to-day calendar of what we have to do.

Like I said, we service most of the areas around the surrounding areas and we have a nice size. fleet. On buses, we used to use one set of buses. That was the first bus right there. And now we’re using a different set, which is this one as well, that says GoLink. These right here are mostly at the stations where when the people come off the train, we are there to pick them up on demand from where they already scheduled on the app or whatever the case may be, we are already there to pick them up.

Like Mr. Elliott said, are we always on time? We’re not always on time when we are picking up and dropping, but as long as we get them where they need to be, they’re very satisfied with it. And like I say, it’s a challenge day to day, but, hey, it’s there. 

To me, I’ve been doing it for so long, to me it’s like I said again, I love doing what I’m doing. Wouldn’t change it for the world. 

These are our new buses which are the GoLink ones. The area that you’re seeing the other bus in, that’s the Plano area where it’s a lot of office buildings. Actually, we deal with everything, you know? We deal with working people in office buildings just as well as the people that’s on demand from home. And like I say, it’s good. It’s a day-to-day thing for me. My shift starts at 4 a.m every morning to 12:30 in the afternoon, sometimes a little longer, but hey, it comes with the job. 

The technology part is, like I said, not really too bad. But we did an Uber thing to schedule as well, but we mostly deal with the apps. If they have problems, we show them how to log in, how to download it. You get new people every day. As long as you come with good vibes with the people, they’re gonna come back at you with good vibes and talk to you with a respectful manner. To me, it’s like a home away from home, because I love it. 

Like I said, I really don’t have a whole lot of challenges with it because I do it every day so I know the ins and outs on it, so it’s not really a bad challenge for me. But it’s a challenge for some. Any questions for me?

Alvaro Villagran

Thank you very much for sharing that experience, especially so many accumulated years of experience, so this is also great to hear. I want to thank everybody again for staying with us and hopefully this is very helpful for you all. stay safe, everybody and have a good rest of the day.

Conclusion

Bringing MOD drivers’ experiences to the forefront of MOD conversations adds a valuable perspective that can make for better systems for passengers, operations staff, planners, dispatchers, and drivers alike. Thank you to Shetera Carroll and DART for helping share this story.

Our effort to capture drivers’ stories is ongoing, and could use your help! If you are a transit agency or operator of mobility on demand services and would like to participate in this project, contact us at mic@sharedusemobilitycenter.org for instructions and interview questions.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us at mic@sharedusemobilitycenter.org.