 |
An additional $1.1 M for Paratransit Montreal, 3 May 2005 - Claude Dauphin announced earlier today that members of the STM Board of Directors had agreed to add $1 million to Paratransit’s budget in order to meet an 11% surge in demand. « Since 2004, the STM has admitted 3,000 new clients, a 20% increase. The financial contribution approved today will certainly help to deal with the demand and to provide a greater number of regular and occasional requests for transportation on a daily basis. This will no doubt be good news for disabled persons who sometimes had to give up on going out because of the unavailability of resources. Based on the 2004 service offer, we expect to provide an additional 500 trips a day in 2005. »
In 2004, the STM handled over 1.5 million paratransit trips and expects to handle nearly 1.7 million in 2005. By re-engineering its operational processes, Paratransit significantly improved its performance. Some of the best results were achieved with respect to customer complaints, which dropped by 20%, along with a significant improvement in the call centre’s accessibility (the ratio of attempted calls/answered calls dropping from 11 to 3), and with the reliability of taxi service now over 99.5%.
The STM operates 93 adapted minibuses and its Board of Directors has just approved the renewal of contracts with 12 taxi companies, ending in 2006, using the principle of a performance-based assessment of the quality and reliability of services rendered, a first in Québec.
The additional funds announced today bring Paratransit’s 2005 budget to over $36.2 M.
- 30 -
|
