Staff Report #5
March 30, 2026
To All Commissioners
Re: 2025 Specialized Transit Service Performance Report
Recommendation
That the report be RECEIVED for information.
Background
In the 2024-2027 Business Plan, London Transit’s vision is: “Striving to be a trusted and valued mobility choice for Londoners”. The vision is supported by the mission statement, “Moving Londoners with an accessible, reliable, and affordable service”. The vision and mission statements give direction to five congruent and competing strategic directions, namely:
- Customer Focused: Be a customer centred organization providing an integrated, affordable and accessible transportation system.
- Employee Focused: Be an engaged, diverse, and respectful workplace.
- Fiscal Accountability: Demonstrate fiscal accountability amid competing needs and objectives.
- Transparency: Foster a culture of transparency, openness, and mutual understanding.
- Sustainability: Sustainable and efficient use of infrastructure.
The Specialized Service is operated under a contract which covers the provision of vehicles and drivers; trip booking, scheduling, and customer service is handled by London Transit employees.
Specialized Transit Service – Efficiency
The following table provides a summary of ridership and revenue service hours actual to budget performance for 2025 (unaudited). Actual ridership and service provided, as well as the related measures varied significantly from budget.
2025 Ridership and Service Hours – Actual versus Budget (unaudited)
| Description | Actual | Budget | Amount Better (Worse) | Percent Better (Worse) |
| Revenue service hours (000’s) | 188,941 | 189,800 | (0.9) | (0.5)% |
| Ridership ( 000’s) | 356,667 | 379,500 | (22.8) | (6.0)% |
| Rides per revenue service hour | 1.9 | 2.0 | (0.1) | (5.0)% |
As indicated in the table, the service level adjustments that were included in the 2025 budget were delivered for the most part, with the 900-hour variance being related to minor increments of service downtime throughout the year (e.g. vehicle breakdown, in-service issue, etc.). The variance in ridership is directly tied to service efficiency, noting the 2025 budget forecasted 2.0 riders per service hour and an average of only 1.9 rides per hour was achieved.
The following table provides comparisons in the various ridership and service hour measures over the past three years.
Ridership and Service Hour Comparisons – 2023 through 2025
| Description | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | % Change Over Period |
| Revenue service hours (000’s) | 131.7 | 167.8 | 188.9 | 43.4 % |
| Ridership (000’s) | 249.8 | 310.8 | 356.7 | 42.8 % |
| Rides per revenue service hour | 1.9 | 1.9 | 1.9 | — % |
| Registrants | 13,029 | 7,730 | 9,772 | (35.6)% |
The table above indicates significant progress in increasing service hours over the previous two years and with the full complement of vehicles for 2026 approved service levels on the road, 2026 results will continue to show significant increases in service hours and ridership. 2026 will also represent the first full year of service scheduling with the new scheduling software, which is anticipated to have positive impacts on service efficiency.
The decline in registrants in 2024 is the result of a cleanup of the customer database which was undertaken in preparation for the implementation of the new scheduling software. This process will be undertaken on a more regular basis going forward to ensure reporting and metric accuracy.
Customer Satisfaction
In an effort to gather first-hand feedback from specialized transit riders, the Voice of the Customer survey process was introduced on the specialized service in 2018. This process involves contacting specialized service riders directly for a telephone interview, providing the opportunity to reach customers who may not be inclined to contact customer service with a complaint or compliment. It is a known fact that a customer is more likely to contact an organization when they have had a poor experience versus a good one, and the traditional reliance on customer contacts only to assess overall customer satisfaction was deemed to be unreliable. The Voice of the Customer allows customers to rate each area of service on their perception of how it meets their needs. Through the remainder of this report, comparisons and contrasts will be drawn between the Voice of the Customer results from 2025 and the previous surveys (2023 and 2024) results where applicable. In addition, areas of focus going forward have been denoted in the tables, with the red dots indicating high priority and orange dots indicating medium priority. These areas of focus will be addressed through various work plan initiatives in 2026 and reported on through the quarterly update process.
The top service characteristics listed in order of importance to the customer from the 2025 survey are set out below with accompanying levels of customer satisfaction with each.
2025 Voice of the Customer Service Priorities
| Service Characteristic | Importance Ranking | Satisfaction Level | Areas of Focus |
| On-time Performance | 27% | 85% | Orange |
| Travel Time | 17% | 87% | |
| Trip Availability | 15% | 81% | Orange |
| Service Coverage | 11% | 88% | |
| Service Safely Operated | 8% | 99% | |
| Helpful Drivers | 5% | 98% | |
| Booking Ease | 4% | 88% |
Historically, areas of focus for the specialized service were identified as those with a service characteristic ranking higher than 10% and a satisfaction level ranking less than 80%. As illustrated in the table above, the combination of the new scheduling software coupled with the significant increase in service hours have resulted in satisfaction levels in excess of 80% for the top seven service characteristics.
Notwithstanding the positive results from the 2025 Voice of the Customer survey, on-time performance and trip availability have been denoted as areas of focus for 2026. As mentioned earlier, trip availability is anticipated to improve given the addition of 10,000 service hours over 2025 service levels, which have been targeted at the service periods where the most demand is occurring. The on-time performance is identified as an area of focus in order to ensure that the various policy reviews scheduled to occur in 2026 continue to consider on-time performance as the most important factor to customers of the service, and that any policy considerations that may have a negative impact on this metric should be carefully considered.
As anticipated, ease of booking satisfaction has improved significantly with the implementation of the new scheduling software and associated customer portal. Driver performance continued its trend of high levels of satisfaction in the 2025 survey, both in terms of safety and helpfulness.
In addition to the Voice of the Customer surveys, customer satisfaction levels with service performance are measured through tracking both the number and nature of customer contacts received via email, social media and phone. When considering these numbers, it is important to recognize that not all contacts are investigated and as such, cannot all be confirmed as accurate. Contacts that are serious in nature or those in which the customer requests a response are all investigated.
The table below sets out a breakdown of the number of service complaints over the three-year period by category. Given the relatively small number of complaints in many of the categories, the trend column indicates where a trend has been identified (up or down) and each of these categories is broken down in greater detail below.
Total Service Performance Complaints by Category 2023-2025
| Complaints – Service | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Trend | Areas of Focus |
| Accessibility | 14 | 13 | 8 | ||
| Early Schedule | 3 | 7 | 4 | ||
| Late Schedule | 24 | 24 | 96 | Up | |
| Missed Passenger | 2 | 5 | 6 | ||
| No Show | 32 | 50 | 103 | Up | Orange |
| Passenger Conduct | — | 9 | 34 | ||
| Routing | 6 | 11 | 22 | ||
| Service received | 91 | 116 | 352 | Up | Orange |
| Trip Availability | 36 | 15 | 54 | ||
| Vehicle | — | 24 | 9 | ||
| Warning Letter Response | 1 | 15 | 49 | Up | |
| Total | 209 | 289 | 737 | ||
| Per 1,000 riders | 0.9 | 0.9 | 2.1 |
It should be noted that the complaints depicted in the table cover the entire year. Given the first six months of 2025 were the period when the new scheduling system was being implemented and the customer portal was being initiated, a number of the contacts received are related to that period. While there are a number of categories that saw upward trends in 2025, the increased contacts, are for the most part related to the new system rollout and the issues that were experienced in the initial roll out period.
In addition to the direct number comparisons to previous years, the total complaints per 1,000 riders provides an alternate measure that normalizes the data based on the number of rides provided, which is important in the context of this range of comparison years given the total rides have increased by 43% over the period. As the table indicates, the total complaints per 1,000 riders has jumped in 2025, albeit still remains at a relatively low level of just 2.1 complaints per 1,000 rides.
With respect to the “Late Schedule” complaints, over 50% occurred in the first quarter of 2025 as the system scheduling parameters were being fine-tuned. During this period, the schedules being created by the new system were not reasonable, and this, coupled with resource issues experienced by the contractor during the same period resulted in numerous scheduling difficulties. Complaints in this category have dropped off to levels below previous years during the last half of 2025, which is consistent with the satisfaction levels for on-time performance in the Voice of the Customer (which was conducted in November).
The growth in “Service Received” complaints was also largely attributable to the new system implementation, noting that approximately 60% of complaints in this category were related to the implementation of the system notifications and the initial confusion with same prior to the system parameters being adjusted. Another 10% of complaints in this category related to ride times which were also affected during the initial rollout but have since been addressed. The complaints in this category during the last half of the year dropped to levels consistent with prior years. This decline in complaints in the last half of the year is consistent with the improved Voice of the Customer ratings from the November 2025 survey.
The contacts relating to “No Show” and “Warning Letter Response” are directly tied to one another. With respect to the category of “No Show”, trips that are being cancelled by customers when they receive the 20 minute reminder that the vehicle is on the way are being counted as a no show given there is no ability to fill the vacancy in the schedule with this limited notice. No shows are tracked and managed based on the specialized service policies, and customers with repeated no shows in excess of the threshold receive a letter advising them that repeated no show rates in consecutive months could result in a suspension from the service. These letters encourage the customer to call and discuss the no show occurrences in an effort to determine a way to reduce instances going forward. These call backs are tracked as “warning letter responses”.
As the table below illustrates, the Voice of the Customer survey results relating to service received has improved in every category in 2025 over 2024 results.
2023 – 2025 Voice of the Customer Results
| % Agree | Trend | Area of Focus | |||
| Voice of the Customer Statement | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | ||
| · Service is on-time | 91% | 84% | 85% | ||
| · Trips are available when I need them | 64% | 78% | 81% | Up | Orange |
| · It is easy to book a trip | 54% | 66% | 88% | Up | |
| · Bus fares are reasonable | 95% | 97% | 99% | Up | |
Trip availability has been identified as an area of focus, noting that the additional service hours allocated in the 2026 operating budget have been targeted to address the days and times of service where the greatest unaccommodated demand is being experienced.
Impressions of Driver Performance
Consistent with service-related contacts, customer contacts (complaints and compliments) regarding driver performance are also tracked and trended. Performance results for 2023 through 2025 with respect to driver complaints are set out in the following table.
Total Driver Complaints by Category 2023-2025
| Complaints – Driver Performance | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Trend | Areas of Focus |
| Driving Unsafe | 19 | 38 | 26 | Orange | |
| Attitude/Treatment | 87 | 156 | 175 | Up | Orange |
| Total | 106 | 194 | 201 | ||
| Per 1,000 riders | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
As the table indicates, complaints relating to driver attitude/treatment in 2025 were similar in number to those in 2024.
Complaints in the “Attitude/Treatment” category again occurred predominantly in the first half of 2025 during the new system implementation period. As indicated earlier in this report, during this timeframe the service contractor was also experiencing resource issues, and service was being reduced on a regular basis, which led to customer frustrations with longer and/or more circuitous trips as administration attempted to ensure all customers were provided with the trip they had been scheduled for. Consistent with the other complaint categories that were impacted by the new system implementation, contacts declined in the last half of the year. This is supported by the overall satisfaction rates with driver performance from the Voice of the Customer survey conducted in November, which is discussed later in this report.
In the case of complaints alleging a significant driver performance/safety issue, all information is forwarded to the contractor for investigation and follow-up. All contacts received relating to the Specialized Service are followed up on by Administration.
In addition to complaints, compliments are also tracked by category. The table below sets out the total compliments received with respect to Driver performance.
Total Driver Compliments by Category 2023-2025
| Compliments – Driver Performance | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Trend |
| Driving | 2 | 1 | 0 | x |
| Attitude/Treatment | 39 | 70 | 97 | Up |
| Total | 41 | 71 | 97 | |
| Per 1,000 riders | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
As the chart above indicates, Operator compliments received for the specialized service are limited, but increased again in 2025 over 2024 levels. This increase in compliments coincides with the results from the 2025 Voice of the Customer survey questions relating to operator performance which are set out in the table below.
2023 – 2025 Voice of the Customer Results
| % Agree | Area of Focus | |||
| Voice of the Customer Statement | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| · Drivers are helpful | 94% | 97% | 99% | |
| · Drivers operate the vehicle safely | 92% | 97% | 97% | |
As the Voice of the Customer results indicate, while there were increased complaints with respect to Driver performance in 2025 (predominantly in the first half of the year), overall satisfaction levels with driver performance in the November survey indicate a very high level of satisfaction.
Going Forward
The areas of focus identified in this report are the subject of the Key Performance Indicators for the specialized service which have been recommended by the Accessible Public Transit Service Advisory Committee (See Communication #4, dated March 30, 2026). Subsequent to Commission approval of these targets, performance updates will be provided as part of the quarterly update reporting, including discussion relating to any initiatives that may be recommended to address unfavourable performance or trends.
Recommended by:
Brandon Goldstone, Manager of Service Integration
Shawn Wilson, Director of Operations – Specialized
Concurred in by:
Kelly S. Paleczny, General Manager