After weeks of escalating tension between riders and employees, the Toronto Transit Commission is bringing forward a series of proposals intended to improve its flagging customer service record.
The initiatives, which will go before the transit commission's meeting Wednesday, include establishing a customer service advisory panel and using "secret shoppers" to assess performance of fare collectors, several of whom have been caught napping on the job by quick-snapping commuters armed with cell-phone cameras.
But the report going before the commission has no price tag on the proposals, some of which would increase staffing levels and add training for employees.
A photo of a fare collector with his head back, mouth open and fingers entwined on his front, fast asleep in his booth at McCowan station was snapped in early January by Jason Wieler and posted on Twitter a couple of weeks later.
It set off a frenzy of recriminations from embittered transit users as they sought to capture similar footage of TTC staff asleep apparently asleep on the job. The transit union shot back, demanding that riders and the media stop bullying their employees.
The transit commission, the TTC's Chief General Manager Gary Webster and Mayor David Miller have acknowledged the beleaguered commission's level of service is lacking, however.
The report going before the commission Wednesday states the TTC "recognizes and acknowledges that many of its customers have been disappointed and discouraged in recent months."
Although the report states that this applies to only a "small percentage" of TTC employees, it goes on to add that "our assessment of the events in recent weeks is that these matters are not just isolated incidents, but an indication of a culture that has become too accepting of performance that does not always meet expectations."
Those problems date at least as far back as a 2008 workplace culture survey, the report states, noting that although absences have decreased, employee performance could use improvement.
The report proposes creating a customer service advisory panel and to "reinforce to employees what customer-service expectations are." It focuses on station collectors, however, vowing to review staffing levels and training and possibly add staff, using TTC ambassadors at busier stations.
Recommendations for better communication with riders - in addition to ongoing initiatives to send delay alerts on Twitter and Facebook and put up video screens on platforms - would put electronic status-information screens in subway stations and ensure that riders "understand what is happening and not enter the system when it is disrupted."
The report also floats the idea of using "external secret shoppers" - people hired by the TTC to ride a vehicle or pass through a station and report back on the kind of service they encounter.
TTC spokesman Brad Ross said the details of how this would be executed haven't yet been worked out, but this is something the commission has done before on a smaller scale - with Wheeltrans vehicles, for example, or to address complaints on particular routes.
"We don't have really any details on that other than that its something that we will begin very quickly," he said. "[Previously]we would use secret shoppers to follow up on complaints to try and deal with a systemic issue. This would be something that would be much more widespread."
The report noted that no funding has been set aside in the TTC's precarious budget for these initiatives, so any necessary funding for the advisory panel, the proposed "secret shoppers" or new four-hour, six-month training program would have to be reallocated from elsewhere in the cash-strapped commission