TTC riders are getting on board with improvements, survey finds
Overall customer satisfaction scores best marks since 2013 thanks to increased reliability
Fewer delays, short turns and crowds are getting the credit for the highest TTC rider satisfaction survey results in two years.
The TTC’s quarterly customer surveys show overall customer satisfaction is 79 per cent, compared with 72 per cent for the same period a year ago. It’s the highest satisfaction score since the second quarter of 2013.
“By focusing on the basics and improving the core reliability of service, we were able to increase levels of customer satisfaction in key areas,” said a presentation to the TTC board on Monday.
The TTC’s gains in reducing trip and wait times are key drivers of the higher satisfaction scores, TTC deputy CEO Chris Upfold said.
It will be more exciting if the TTC can sustain the improvements, he said Wednesday.
“This is a very good indication of the stuff that we’ve been saying for the last two, three or four years — that it sometimes takes people a while to notice things have changed. I think they are starting to see that,” said Upfold.
He cited new maps, uniforms and cleaner vehicles and stations as other contributors.
“We used to do a customer satisfaction survey that wasn’t anywhere near as good as this. Those numbers were going down, down, down every quarter and nobody was paying any attention to them. So even stabilizing these, which we’ve managed to do over the last three years, is good. Seeing this increase now is really positive because we are seeing it in the areas we are putting our effort into and seeing it sustained for at least one quarter will be really good,” Upfold said.
“It’s consistency. People need that consistency when it comes to transit.”
The positive results extend to riders on buses, streetcars and subways. Streetcar and bus riders registered only slightly lower satisfaction than subway customers.
Eighty-one per cent of Yonge subway riders gave the TTC a good or excellent rating, as did 79 per cent of Bloor-Danforth users.
The result corresponds to a 26-percent drop in the number of minutes of delay on the Yonge line compared with the first two quarters of last year — down to 6,516 minutes from 8,822 minutes.
The TTC has also eliminated most short turns on the St. Clair streetcar by adding four minutes to the route’s run time. Similar attention has also reduced the number of short turns on the Dufferin bus from a high last year of 350 a week to under 25 most weeks a year later.
The satisfaction survey is conducted quarterly. It is based a 10-minute phone survey of 1,000 Toronto residents, 13 years and older who use the TTC at least once every few weeks.