Municipal 311 deduplication. Converts how many people complained into how many problems exist. Toronto 311 open data, 2025.
One street corner produces 14.4% of every redundant 311 report in Toronto. It is not a street corner problem. It is an automated submitter.
An aggregate duplicate rate is only meaningful if the duplicates are spread across the city. If a handful of places produce most of them, the rate is a story about those places. This page names them, quantifies them, and records which were excluded from the headline numbers and on what evidence.
redundancy_concentration| Service request type | Intersection | Ward | Redundant reports | Clusters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moving Motor Vehicle Noise | BATHURST ST & CANYON AVE | York Centre | 1,929 | 19 |
| Staff Service - Complaint - 311 Toronto | JOHN ST & KING ST W | Spadina-Fort York | 726 | 26 |
| Staff Service - Compliment - 311 Toronto | JOHN ST & KING ST W | Spadina-Fort York | 330 | 25 |
| Moving Motor Vehicle Noise | BATHURST ST & SHEPPARD AVE W | York Centre | 139 | 6 |
| Comment - 311 Toronto | JOHN ST & KING ST W | Spadina-Fort York | 122 | 22 |
| Hydrant-Leaking | BIRCHMOUNT RD & SHEPPARD AVE E | Scarborough-Agincourt | 71 | 4 |
| Expressway Requires Cleaning | F G GARDINER C W & GARDINER X W GARDINER C W | Etobicoke-Lakeshore | 53 | 21 |
| Bridge - Graffiti Complaint | SOUSA MENDES ST & W TORONTO RAIL PATH TRL | Davenport | 41 | 18 |
| Pick up Dead Wildlife | BERKELEY ST & RICHMOND ST E | Toronto Centre | 40 | 1 |
| Traffic Signal Equipment - Graffiti Complaint | BLOOR ST W & ST GEORGE ST | University-Rosedale | 38 | 16 |
| Pothole on Expressway | F G GARDINER C W & GARDINER X W GARDINER C W | Etobicoke-Lakeshore | 37 | 11 |
| Road Pothole / Road Damage | MCCOWAN RD & SHEPPARD AVE E | Scarborough North | 34 | 12 |
Units: reports, clusters. Source: query
top_redundant_places in sql/10_evidence.sql, over all
intersection-located requests in 311 Service Requests 2025.
Three independent checks. Any one alone would be suggestive; together they are not ambiguous.
a. The reports arrive on a timer. On 2025-01-08, 27 reports landed between 17:29:13 and 17:56, spaced 43 to 46 seconds apart. Across the year, 30.1% of consecutive reports at this corner arrive 30–60 seconds apart, against 14.7% for every other noise report in the city. No group of residents telephones on a metronome.
| Service request type | Intersection | Gaps measured | 30–60s gaps | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moving Motor Vehicle Noise | BATHURST ST & SHEPPARD AVE W | 144 | 52 | 36.10% |
| Moving Motor Vehicle Noise | BATHURST ST & CANYON AVE | 1,947 | 586 | 30.10% |
| Traffic Signal Equipment - Graffiti Complaint | BLOOR ST W & ST GEORGE ST | 53 | 2 | 3.80% |
| Pick up Dead Wildlife | BERKELEY ST & RICHMOND ST E | 40 | 1 | 2.50% |
| Staff Service - Complaint - 311 Toronto | JOHN ST & KING ST W | 751 | 1 | 0.10% |
| Expressway Requires Cleaning | F G GARDINER C W & GARDINER X W GARDINER C W | 73 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Bridge - Graffiti Complaint | SOUSA MENDES ST & W TORONTO RAIL PATH TRL | 58 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Pothole on Expressway | F G GARDINER C W & GARDINER X W GARDINER C W | 47 | 0 | 0.00% |
Unit: percent of consecutive inter-arrival gaps. Source: query
submission_regularity. The signature appears at exactly two
places in the file and both are Moving Motor Vehicle Noise on Bathurst St.
Everywhere else in Toronto is at or below 3.8%.
b. Noise complaints do not normally concentrate. This type puts 92.0% of its volume on five corners. The next most concentrated comparable type, Amplified Sound, also a noise nuisance, manages 10.7% across 239 intersections.
| Service request type | Located requests | Distinct intersections | Top 5 requests | Top 5 share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Staff Service - Complaint - 311 Toronto | 752 | 1 | 752 | 100.00% |
| Staff Service - Compliment - 311 Toronto | 355 | 1 | 355 | 100.00% |
| Moving Motor Vehicle Noise | 2,302 | 154 | 2,117 | 92.00% |
| Hydrant-Leaking | 250 | 138 | 91 | 36.40% |
| Pothole on Expressway | 281 | 120 | 92 | 32.70% |
| Expressway Requires Cleaning | 480 | 167 | 148 | 30.80% |
| Public Spaces Complaint | 529 | 175 | 138 | 26.10% |
| Traffic Signal Equipment - Graffiti Complaint | 585 | 226 | 150 | 25.60% |
| Road - Graffiti Complaint | 435 | 179 | 109 | 25.10% |
| Bridge - Graffiti Complaint | 387 | 199 | 92 | 23.80% |
| Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE ) Camera Vandalism or Damage | 388 | 203 | 49 | 12.60% |
| Dog Off-Leash in a City Park | 287 | 181 | 34 | 11.80% |
Units: requests, intersections, percent. Source: query
type_concentration.
c. The daily shape does not match the annual shape. Across the year the reports look like a genuine nuisance, weekend-weighted (Saturday 553, Sunday 370, weekdays 172–264) and peaking 16:00–21:00. But inside the 278-report January cluster the pattern is flat and slightly weekday-heavy (weekday mean 19.4, weekend mean 16.3). A real noise nuisance is bursty and weekend-weighted at both scales. This one is only weekend-weighted in aggregate, which is what you get when a submitter runs more often on some days than others.
Disposition. Excluded from the headline duplicate rate and from the seeded demo data. A scripted submitter's output is not a near-duplicate example to learn from; it is a bug. Note the direction of the correction: excluding it makes every headline number in this project smaller.
Why excluded. These records are feedback about the 311 service itself, a complaint about a call handler, a compliment, a general comment. They are geocoded to the building that received them, not to the location of any condition. There is nothing at John & King for a crew to repair. One of these types shows a 100% duplicate rate, which is not a finding about Toronto's streets; it is 752 pieces of feedback filed at one address.
When the exclusion was decided. Before observing its effect on any result. The criterion is what the records are, service feedback, not field conditions, established by reading the type names and confirming that 100% of them sit at the contact centre's own address. The effect was measured afterwards and is reported below whether it helped or not. It made the headline number smaller.
| Scope | Requests examined | Clusters | Duplicate rate | Redundant reports | Redundancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| field conditions only (311-feedback types removed) | 76,582 | 64,365 | 24.81% | 12,217 | 15.95% |
| field conditions, automated Bathurst St submitter also removed | 74,489 | 64,340 | 22.70% | 10,149 | 13.62% |
Units: requests, clusters, percent. Source: query
sensitivity_field_only in sql/10_evidence.sql.
As published, before any exclusion, the rate is 26.02% on 77,833 examined
requests (query dupe_rate_intersection).
After both exclusions, 13,387 redundant reports becomes 10,149 across 64,340 clusters, and the largest remaining concentration is well under 1% of the total. That residual is the real, unglamorous duplicate signal: potholes reported by four neighbours, one dead raccoon called in three times, a traffic signal out that six drivers noticed. It is worth deduplicating. It just does not reorder a ward ranking.