Lewis and Peloza call for performance audit of London Transit after recent budget battle with commission

Will London Transit be audited? Two members of London council are spearheading an effort to have an operations audit of London Transit. Daryl Newcombe explains why.

Is it time to take an independent look at the performance of London Transit’s bus and paratransit services in London?

In a letter to council’s Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (SPPC), Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis and Budget Chair Elizabeth Peloza call for an operations and performance audit of the London Transit Commission (LTC).

In justifying an audit, the letter cites recent budget deliberations when, “The London Transit Commission (LTC) indicated it was unable to provide any service improvement or increase service hours despite a massive increase to its base budget.”

“A 49 per cent increase base [budget] increase was going to result in zero new hours of service? I have real concerns about how we are operating over at LTC,” Lewis tells CTV News.

The letter goes on to explain, “Council also received a wide array of concerns from the public pertaining to: current service delivery, lack of industrial area service, hours of operation concerns, lack of integration with school boards for secondary student access, high dissatisfaction and systemic issues with the delivery of paratransit, among other issues.”

Lewis added, “It’s not so much about the financials, it’s about the performance. Are we getting the return on the dollars we’re putting in?”

The proposed audit would investigate

It also requests an analysis of whether city hall should do away with the transit commission and oversee bus operations internally.

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions that it’s what the auditor is going to find, but other cities do run their transit commissions directly as a public service through city hall,” Lewis explained.

According to the letter, “Council has not yet identified whether LTC is the appropriate service delivery provider when the BRT system is ready to begin operations.”

LTC Chair Stephanie Marentette told CTV News in a statement that the commission welcomes an audit as long as it is treated as a partner in the process.

“I have every confidence in our senior leadership team and we welcome the opportunity to assess our strengths as well as opportunities for improvements and efficiencies,” Marentette stated.

As well, the LTC was already in discussion about an audit, “Prior to the news of the motion, the commission was considering initiating its own internal audit for that same reason.”

The call for an audit comes as council faces significant decisions regarding the long-term delivery of transit service in London.

The city’s Mobility Master Plan (MMP) is being developed to establish targets and guide investment in various forms of mobility over the next 25 years.

Lewis and Peloza’s letter stated, “Transit is the only [mobility] mode outside of direct city delivery and decision making.”

“We did it with housing,” Lewis added. “We did it with HDC (Housing Development Corporation), we brought it in-house into the municipal housing development division within city hall and we’re getting much better results.”

Lewis explained that an external auditor might not be required to conduct a robust public input process with LTC passengers, because their complaints have already been heard by council.

“This is beyond ridership satisfaction at this point, this goes to the heart of operations. We need a technical review of how the service is operating,” said Lewis.

Currently, two members of city council, Coun. David Ferreira and Coun. Jerry Pribil, sit on the seven member commission.

The motion by the deputy mayor and budget chair will be considered by members of SPPC on March 26.

The motion reads

That Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake a Request for Proposals for an external auditor to initiate a comprehensive operations and performance audit of the London Transit Commission, with the following audit scope:

a) inclusion of current routing of service in regard to best practices in major municipalities, structure of the organization, financial structuring of various passes and contracts, operational preparedness and readiness to integrate with future Rapid Transit corridors, and to other KPIs to identify strengths and weaknesses;

b) identification of alternate service delivery model considerations including but not limited to the municipality delivering the service directly;

c) provision of recommendations to municipal council at the completion of the audit;

d) and that Civic Administration be further directed to identify an appropriate source of financing.