How many is too many complaints for the TTC?

TTC complaints are on the rise in 2010, despite the Commission's highly publicized re-commitment to customer service. According to numbers published in the Globe and Mail, through the beginning of the year to October, the TTC received a total of 28,360 complaints, which represents a 15 per cent increase over the same period in 2009.

On the surface that sounds pretty bad. But perhaps this is one of those statistics that requires a bit of context. A quick bit of math reveals that this number works out to a daily average of about 93. Although that's surely enough to keep the person fielding them pretty busy, it's not really the damning indictment of the TTC it could all too easily be made out to be. With over two million trips taken each day, the ride-to-complaint ratio is really quite low.

I'm not suggesting that the TTC doesn't have significant room to improve or that an increase in complaints should be disregarded altogether, but my sense is that the current daily average is well within the limits of reason. And, to be fair, this year's numbers also reveal an increased number of rider compliments to front-line staff (up 32 per cent from last year).

What do you think? Am I being too generous? What would a reasonable number of daily complaints be?

Photo by thru the night in the blogTO Flickr pool.