City Launches New 911 Response Tracking Website

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) - New York City residents have a new tool to track 911 response times: a website that shows weekly averages for how long it took to get to fires, medical emergencies and other types of calls.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Monday that the end-to-end 911 response time reporting system site was up and running.

"The overhaul of the City's decades-old 911 system has been a critical part of our efforts to modernize and improve emergency response operations," Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. "End-to-end response times provide insight into how much time each stage of the call process takes, and this new performance measurement will allow agencies to identify areas where overall response time can be reduced even further."

LINK: Visit NYC's 911 Performance Reporting Website

Previously, the city government could compute response times only for individual agencies, not categories of calls. And the clock started when the agency received the call from a 911 operator, not when the caller first reached 911. That changed with updates to the city's 911 system earlier this year.

New York City's 911 system handles more than 11 million calls per year. Changes to the system in recent years have spurred contention between the city and unions representing firefighters, paramedics and dispatchers.

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