Toronto’s 311 help line will no longer respond to email requests for information or service as of March 15.

The 311 program, which processed 70,000 emails in 2010, will save $280,000 a year by cancelling the option.

The move helped balance the city’s books this year but at the price of reduced customer service, said Councillor Paul Ainslie, chair of council’s government management committee.

Ainslie, whose committee oversees 311, said he personally uses email to contact the service when he’s touring his ward looking for problems.

If anything, he’d like to see use of email expanded to follow up on citizens’ complaints by sending out an email that the pothole has been filled, tree pruned or water leak fixed.

“I’m a big fan of email,” Ainslie said. “In this day and age, having a customer service line that doesn’t include email seems backwards. I’m certainly going to push for putting it back in.”

While losing email, citizens can go online to report problems with trash pickup, missing bins, graffiti/litter, potholes, water problems, tree pruning, snow clearing and property maintenance issues.

Recently, 311 launched a mobile application that lets people report pothole and graffiti problems from their smartphone.

And phone calls from the public are being answered much faster, said 311 director Neil Evans.

A report last year by Auditor General Jeff Griffiths said half the callers were waiting more than 75 seconds for someone to answer in May and June of last year.

By November, the wait had dropped to a range of 10 to 20 seconds, better than the target of 30 seconds, Evans said. And today, calls are being answered after only eight seconds on average.

The improvement is in part due to the mild winter, with fewer calls about gaping potholes, watermain breaks and snow clearing lapses, he said.

Also, staff have become more efficient, Evans said, noting 311 has only been around since September 2009. And there is less absenteeism.

In looking for budget savings, email was seen to be expendable because fewer than 10 per cent of contacts from citizens came in via email. It’s seen as inefficient because an email about, say, missed trash pickup may not include the person’s address, or there may be more than one street by that name and there’s no postal code, he said.

“It’s harder to get clarity. You have to go back and forth. It sometimes takes three or four times as long as it would to do the same thing over the phone.”

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Eliminating email was more palatable than other possible budget cuts, Evans said.

“The budget was a concern. We had to reduce, as every other division did. And certainly, to take resources away from an inefficient channel is a lot better than taking it away from the phone.”