We are too damn polite on this blog . . . indeed too afraid to challenge the status quo . . .

“During one such call, a CSR reported that a resident said they kept sleeping through their alarm and wondered if 311 could provide a wake-up call service like the one hotels offer.”

Jeezless we need a wake up . . . call 311!

Harper is turning our peacekeepers into warmongers!

Campbell is turning our tree farm licenses into sprawl!

Robertson is turning our city into a haven for over paid control freaks!

. . .

Why the hell do we a need Steve Wynn to rip us off?

Why do we need a Concord
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/6urbandesign/2010.pdf to brutalize the town?

Good heavens even if we had a 311 “zocalo” we wouldn’t know what to do!

Where’s the incarnate Gandhi when we need her?

I called 311 for the first time yesterday. The call was answered quickly – and by an actual human no less. The person who answered very quickly determined what I needed and got the relevant department (composting services) on the phone, AND confirmed that the person she’d reached would be able to satisfy my needs. Then, the person who I did speak to next actually DID answer my questions quickly, politely, and knowledgeably.

If only Telus/Fido/Shaw/etc./etc. would provide 1/10th of the quality perhaps I wouldn’t be so reluctant to spend money.

I have called 311 twice. First time was to report a dead cat on my street. There was no wait (it was in the evening) and the person who answered was efficient and helpful. (Although I was a bit surprised by the question “How much does the cat weigh? Uhhh….less than 30 pounds? It’s not a sabre toothed tiger..”)
Second time was with a simple question that should be “answerable” on the City’s website. After a wait of approximately 60 seconds, I asked “Is there visitor parking available at City Hall?” I was put on hold for approximately two minutes with the answer back “Yes.” When I asked “from which street do I access the parking?” (Given that turning left into City Hall can be challenging), I was again put on hold and then told “Hmmm….I think it’s Yukon…yes, Yukon.” Seems like this question should not have been too difficult to answer.
Overall, pleased with 311, but confused why the City is not encouraging it more.

I called 311 a few months ago while walking… I walked from my house on 20th and Oak all the way to Broadway and Willow and still hadn’t gotten out of hold music land. My guess is it’s fine as long as only one or two people are calling at once!

I have found my dealings with 311 to be seldom better than irritating. My problem is that when I call City Hall I usually have a very specific department in mind–often, as it happens, Transportation Engineering or (less frequently) the Health department– or sometimes the City Clerk’s office . I may not know the name of the right person to talk to, but I almost always have a very clear idea of the specific information I’m seeking; as recent examples I can cite the proposal to increase heavy truck traffic on the Granville Bridge, the proposed massive redesign of the north end of the Bridge, or questions relating to aspects of construction of the Olympic Line (this was before it opened). And if your old contact had moved on to some other portfolio, it never used to be a problem to find the right go-to person in relatively short order.

Until the advent of 311 it was a simple matter to simply call the departments in question– although responsibilities often shift in Engineering, it was not at all difficult, with a few questions, to determine who I should be speaking to, and either speak with that person or leave a message on their voice mail. This practice has served me well for the past couple of decades or so of dealing with City Hall departments.

What the advent of 311 has done is, in effect, established numerous roadblocks in this process. What happens now is that when I call the old departmental numbers, the call is shunted into the 311 swamp, where I generally splosh about in the mud for 10 or 15 minutes or more, waiting for someone to come and rescue me from hold purgatory. After that the real fun begins. If I ask for someone by name in, say, Engineering, I am told it’s not possible to contact that person directly. When I ask why, I’m told that it’s not policy to allow this to happen. Say *what*?? When I point out that I have already spoken with this person several times and in fact am on a first-name basis with them, that is ignored and I am asked if there is something the 311 operator can do for me. At which point I usually respond, exasperatedly, with something like “Well, not unless you can give me these specifics on such-and-such a project,” knowing full well they can’t. At which point they respond with “Well no, I’m sorry, you’d have to talk to someone in Engineering about that” (This actually happened!). At which point I say “Yes! Precisely! So would you (sigh) connect me with Mr. X_____, please, as requested?!” “Well, no, I can’t do that…” And round and round we go. Sometimes they offer to pass on my message. Frustrating if you want the info ASAP. At best I get connected with the main Engineering operator (for some reason they still seem to have one), but unless the person is in their office at that exact moment (doesn’t often happen, especially on Fridays), I’m still SOL. Leave a voice mail, get shunted back out into the system. And when, sometimes after a couple of days, I finally hear back from the Engineer in question (and with a great stroke of luck, it turns out to be the right one), he can’t offer me a direct number as that would circumvent 311, and the telecommunications mavens at City Hall don’t like that. Gotta justify that enormous financial outlay somehow. You won’t find a lot of middle-and-upper-level City staff who are happy about 311 either, I suspect, judging from the complaints I’ve heard.

I think 311 has its uses. If I want to report a cat up a tree, or a pothole that has suddenly appeared on my street, or a malfunctioning pedestrian crossing light, or something equally innocuous, the system seems able to rise to the occasion, although the frequent long initial waits on hold try the patience– I ‘m certainly not about to use using up a quarter of my lunch hour waiting on the phone ( don’t have one on my desk), for instance. And the easily discouraged would probably be disinclined to pursue any but the most urgent matters when contemplating the hoops that have to be jumped through. Sometimes the 311 system even functions in an expeditious way; during the Olympics, the nightly noise assault that poured off the stage of the Place de la Francophonie on Granville Island drove my wife to call the Mayor’s office, and while Gregor was not available (not surprising), she was patched immediately through to his secretary with no questions asked. Whether that was a case of that 311 operator’s bending the rules, I don’t know; but for once the system functioned as rationally as it should.

All to often, however, it doesn’t, notably for those of us seeking very specific information on a very specific matter. When the 311 system was launched, I argued that the revamping of the City’s communications system was not only fixing something that wasn’t broken but amounted to a re-invention of the wheel. The trouble is that when you re-invent the wheel you want the new wheel, ideally, to function significantly better than the old one, but at the very least function with equal efficiency. And for me, thus far, this hasn’t happened with 311. I still think it was a huge waste of money for what we now have.
gmgw