The Paul Wells Show - A man in transit: What moves Andy Byford?

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Andy Byford has gained a reputation as the person to call when your public transit system is in crisis. In over three decades as a public servant, he has run transit systems in Toronto, New York and London, England. He talks about what makes a good transit system, a recent wave of violent crime, and his public battle with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

This week, the Underground Man. Only one person has ever run the subway systems of Toronto, New York City and London, England. It's Andy Byford, one of the world's most extraordinary public servants. You are there to make your political masters look good, to do their bidding. I don't think you're their mouthpiece, and you certainly should not do something that's immoral, illegal, or just plain wrong. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. People who follow politics have a few rules of thumb that they don't usually share with the rest of us.

One of those rules is that elections are often won and lost based on how you get to work. People who drive are more likely to own their own homes, to have lawns and driveways, to have a stake in the quality of life in their neighborhood. People who take public transit are likelier to live near the centers of cities. They're more likely to be renters. They're way more comfortable with big government because it gets them to work and it funds libraries and daycares they can get to. So in last year's Ontario election, Doug Ford's Conservatives promised more highways and the provincial Liberals promised massive transit subsidies. And Doug Ford won big. Now that's not the way those stories always end, but mass transit is a useful angle for thinking about them.

So now you might understand a little better why I've wanted to talk to Andy Byford since this show began. He's a bit of a legend in mass transit circles. He ran the Toronto Transit Commission for years, and then the Metropolitan Transit legend in mass transit circles. He ran the Toronto Transit Commission for years, and then the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City. That didn't go well because it turned out New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo got along with Byford like chalk and cheese. And then, right after COVID hit, he became Commissioner of Transport for London. These are all amazingly complex systems,

with as many differences between them as similarities. And his experience at each was quite different. So I wanted to talk to Byford about all of it, especially in today's context, when rising crime has made more and more people nervous about riding the subway, and the increasing complexity of government threatens the expansion of many subway systems. This episode is a transit nerd's dream. Byford isn't just a decorated veteran of municipal government in several countries. He's also a champion talker. After the break, my conversation with Andy Byford. Andy Byford, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me. How does one get into transit? Well, if my tale is anything to be gone by, you can do it via a rather unusual route. I mean, most people have a lifelong passion for such things and presumably just apply to a transit authority of their choice. Mine was a slightly different route. I mean, I was always interested in public transit as a kid. And I grew up in Plymouth in Devon in England, and I was very interested in shipping. In particular, I toyed with going into the Navy when I was younger. And I took a long, hard look at that, actually. But for various reasons, didn't do that, went off to university, I studied languages, which is a bit

of an unusual route for a chance that executive the majority come from a legal or or an engineering background i'm not an engineer and i went to once i graduated i went to a recruitment fair at which london underground were seeking um graduate trainees on a rather unfortunate day because that day just happened to be a tube strike everyone had to pretty much walk to get to the venue i walked from paddington across town to islington which if those of you out there know london that's a fair old track i went up to a rather um harassed looking uh lul london underground employee and said i'd be interested in working at the tube and in a way

the rest history but i do have family history my granddad drove a bus for London Transport for 40 years, including through the Blitz. And my dad worked for London Transport for some time. So I knew a bit about it. And it's certainly something that's kept me interested and given me the privilege and honor, really, of moving around the world. It's been a fabulous 33-year career to date. So there was never any point as a child where you would stand on the platform with a notebook checking when trains would arrive and leave? No, no. I was kind of more into buses in a way, but I was always interested in the logistics of

transport, just being able to match. And I think there's a lot of carryover to airlines, being able to match the right crew with the right equipment on the right route at the right time at the right place every day. There's a lot of moving parts to that jigsaw. And I love the fact that, A, you've got to solve that on a daily basis and react to problems as they crop up. And B, I've always had a passion for customer service. So I used to say a lot goes into making a forgettable journey. I love it if I say to a customer, how was your trip in today? And they say, I can't even remember. Excellent, we've done our job, because that's what you're aiming to do. But in order to make it forgettable,

a lot of things have to come together. And that's my passion. That's what I enjoy doing with my wonderful frontline colleagues out there. What that means is that's the sum of all of the disasters you've avoided. That's right. But basically, it's a bit like a duck, really, you know, you see these ducks moving serenely across the water, but the feet are paddling away furiously that in some ways running a transit systems like that, what people don't realise is how many disasters are not literally catastrophic disasters, but service-affecting incidents are avoided by the sheer professionalism of the frontline and people working on the stations, on the trains, on the buses, but also in the control centres. You have to be very proactive where in an airline, you might, for example, have an hour, half an hour's notice of a problem. Let's take the Victoria line on the tube as a good

example. On the tube now, the service is so intense, you literally have seconds if, say, a train is delayed because a customer's taken ill or you've got a door problem that's delaying a train in the station. You have seconds to react or you will end up with trains trapped in tunnels and that's what you don't want. Goodness. Quite young from london to sydney that's your first sort of lateral yes i i left the tube initially there was a there was an intervening period i left the tube to um after nearly 15 years i loved it i worked my way up from a station foreman at regents park on the bakeloo station bakeloo line albeit a graduate trainee my first job job, I'm proud of that. I think it grounded me, was a uniformed station foreman. So in other words, the person on a shift basis,

early nights or late, working around the clock, in charge of running a small station, had a team of three. And our job was to fix everything that happened. And you wore a horrible, scratchy, ill-fitting uniform. But it grounded me. It gave me an empathy for frontline colleagues because I know what it's like to work shifts. I know what it's like to be surrounded by angry customers. I know what it's like to have that lonely feeling of, oh my God, I've got to fix this. And back in the day, we didn't really have any technology to help us.

This is 1989. But it always gave me that grounding. But I made my way up to general manager and then saw an opportunity to branch out. I wanted to get experience of mainline operations. So I moved to what used to be British Rail. I was ops and safety director for a company called Southeastern.

But that set the path forward. I really liked turnarounds. And so under the jurisdiction or under the direction rather of a legend to me, my MD at the time, Michael Holden, British Rail icon, we turned that organisation around. I was the ops and safety director. The punctuality was woeful. The trains were in a mess.

The new fleet rollout wasn't going well. We really worked hard to turn that around. I then moved sideways to be the same role in the sister company, Southern. And at that point, after three more years, so six years in total on British Rail, I got a call out of the blue from a headhunter asking me if I'd like to go to Australia. Are you always sort of skating one step ahead of disaster? Or I guess another way to put it is, how far is your run-of-the-mill transit system from what it ideally should be, if investments were based not on political constraint,

but on an objective calculation of what the system needs. Sure. Well, I mean, I just want to say, first of all, and I appreciate you don't mean literally necessarily disaster, public transport is very safe. It's been there a long time. Transport systems, railway systems, a classic example, have developed over the year to a point where they are remarkably safe. If you look at the injury statistics or worse, the fatality statistics divided by the huge numbers of people that are carried, your chances of being involved in an accident or being a victim of crime are stunningly low.

And that is born out of experience. So you look at the way railway signalling has developed over the years. That was progressively developed largely as a result of accidents that happened in the very early days, in the same way as planes have become much safer over the years because of experience thereby learned. years because of experience thereby learned. But one golden rule for any professional, a transit professional, is you must maintain a state of good repair. And that's where you can sometimes come into conflict with politicians who are very interested in sexy new subway extensions or, I don't know, roll out of new types of buses because that makes a photo op. That's the thing that garners the

attention that's where you can say i did that that's where you get to cut the ribbon and that's all good and we only i'm a transit professional 33 years i want to see extensions i want to see more people using public transport i want to see transit systems extended but job one is to maintain what you currently have in a state of good repair. There's no point in having a beautiful new subway extension if at the boundary you then encounter problems because you've allowed the existing network to fall into a problematic state. So, for example, the track is in such a bad condition that you need protracted or prolonged permanent speed restrictions

or the sign signaling system is unable to cope with the increased frequency that a subway extension would normally require you've got to maintain state of good repair sometimes that's a difficult message to say to politicians who want to focus on the next stage utopia is having both and i have experienced that as well we're at well a good example would be my most recent gig in london where we opened the stunning new elizabeth line on my watch or the toronto experience i had at the ttc six wonderful years at the ttc i was the ceo and we opened the subway extension out to vaughan metropolitan center in fawnan region and that in sorry in York region

and that was the York Spadina subway extension now that was opened and we also rolled out a new subway fleet the Toronto Rockets we rolled out new streetcars we rolled out the Presto motor payment we opened a new streetcar barn all in in addition to making fundamental improvements to the base state of the system so we were buying new buses we were renovating a track we got a lot done in six years so i was very proud of my time at the ttc and i'm very grateful to the city council to the province who enabled us to do that we had good funding streams and we have politicians who got that state of good repair is as important as the new build that I just described. So I've never lived in Toronto. I take the TDC most times I visit. The impression I get from

Torontonians is they, in large number, very much use the subway every day. They ride the rocket. And they are in a constant state of near despair over the state of the thing. Torontoians seem to love to complain about the TTC. Do you see why? Well, first of all, I'd say it's a bit of a sport to complain about your transit system, irrespective of where you live. You know, certainly my experience in Toronto

was not a lot different from Railcorp in Sydney where people hated rail corp they used to call it fail corp where a British rail or the train operating companies that succeeded them had a bit of a bad reputation not all of it warranted I think you need to remember that most people unless they're train spotters they're not riding around because they want to to you know to have a check out the system it's it's what's known as a distressed purchase you need to take the subway or the buses in order to get to work and maybe you resent that to a certain extent so people typically aren't going to comment when things go well but they'll definitely comment when they don't go well. And to be fair, sometimes with absolute justification, because we don't always get it

right. We don't always provide the level of reliability that we should. If you have allowed the system to degrade, you will get signal failures, you will get track conditions that require a speed restriction. Sometimes, you know, we don't present the best possible face in terms of customer uh service and that garners complaints so my time at the ttc i think people understood what we were trying to do i i'm a stickler for accountability i most certainly didn't want to be one of those people who legitimately sometimes gets criticized for well you, who are these faceless bureaucrats running the service? My view was, as the CEO, if there's a big problem, I should be out there owning it. I don't think you can run a transit system from behind a desk,

and you shouldn't leave your colleagues suffering and struggling to be criticized when they're least able to affect a solution to a problem. I used to be out there standing shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues, taking the hits, explaining to customers, look, sorry, this is what's happened. This is what we're doing about it. This is how long it will take to fix. You must own the problem.

And I think that ultimately squares the circle in that people will give you a bit more time because they see you're trying your damnedest. That runs counter to a whole theory of communications that is very predominant these days, which is you only push out positive message. No, I don't agree with that. You don't talk about a problem until you're damn sure you know what the solution is going to be. And a view of communications that essentially views response from the consumer as problematic because I'm busy putting my message

out and you're getting in the way. Right. So that's anathema to me. I absolutely pay attention to customer feedback. I used to surprise people in both New York and Toronto by personally replying to their emails. Quite often you get an email where someone would say, look, I don't know why I'm bothering to write this to you because chances are you'll never read it. And even if you do, you won't get a response. I'm kind of obsessive about that. I would quite often reply at 6, 5am in the morning, respectfully answering the points that they raised and people were taken aback. Now you can't reply to everything because the volume is just overwhelming. But if someone has taken the time specifically to write to me

i owe them the courtesy of a response so to your point about only putting out good news to me that as into the or v is into the territory of spin uh i think people see through that i think customers want and deserve and give you credit for uh honest. So if you are upfront with your failures and you explain, look, this is what's happened. This is what we're doing about it. This is how long it will take to fix. And we're going to learn from that. They're more likely to be forgiven when something happens that maybe isn't of your making or when things don't go as well as they should do because they they they they're sign of face to a problem i also to my earlier point feel very strongly that if you as a leader just keep your head down or if you just constantly apologize or if worse still you throw your own

team under the bus and I've seen many transit leaders do that, what does that say to your frontline staff when their own boss leader throws them under the bus, won't even stick up for the organization? So all the organizations I've run, I tenaciously stick up for them and for the employees. Now, it might be behind the scenes, you have a real heart-to-heart and harsher words are said, but you tenaciously stick up for the employees. Now, it might be behind the scenes, you have a real heart to heart and harsher words are said, but you tenaciously stick up for the organisation. In Toronto, the one thing that bugged me was occasionally, and the media would say this,

you know, Chief Apology Officer Andy Barnford keeps apologising. No, not true. There's a difference between an apology and an explanation. Now, if we did absolutely screw up, yeah, absolutely. I would go out and apologize personally and I'd take the hit. But other times people misconstrued an apology for an explanation.

Let's take an example. If, and it does happen, you suffer the awful tragedy, an all-around tragedy of someone committing suicide, throwing themselves in front of a train. I wouldn't apologize for the ensuing disruption, but I would explain why it was that the service was so badly disrupted. But that was not of the TTC's making, or New York City Transit for that matter. But if it was something where we made an absolute mess of it, yeah, sure, I would go out and say, look, sorry, got that wrong. Here's what we're doing about it. Now, just when you've got all of these reforms implemented and running in Toronto, you get hired by the MTA, the subway and bus component of New York City Transit. Scary job? It's scary in many ways because of the scale, but I felt I had good grounding. I

had a good background. My time at the Tube, subsequently learning about mainline operations, going to Australia, where I then dealt with buses and trains, but then particularly going to the TTC, which truly is multimodal with streetcars and paratransit, et cetera, et cetera. I felt I was well-trained, well-prepared to go to the daddy, the real big challenge of New York City transit. And I was very proud of the fact that we real big challenge of New York City transit. And I was very proud of the fact that we had a lot of success at the TTC. One of the media outlets described the TTC back in 2012. I think the right wording was a demoralized shambles.

Five years later, 2017, we won the APTA, American Public Transportation Association's Outstanding Transit System of the Year. So that I dedicated to the wonderful people at the TTC. That was their success, not mine. But off I went to New York. You do your due diligence in advance. I had studied it. I knew what the problems were I'll be walking into. I had a reasonable idea of what the politics might be like. And I knew I was going in at a tough time because at the time this was on the back of what had been described as the summer of hell. The 2017 meltdown in subway performance, derailments, people trapped on trains for protracted periods and mounting dissatisfaction, even anger in the state of the transit system. But I like a challenge, Paul. That's what I've always done in my career.

So I headed off to New York. I was so honored to pick up that job. I pinched myself every day in that role. How did some kid from Plymouth become president of New York City Transit? And although I was only there for two years, I had a blast. You inherited a major project that was going to cause major disruption, which was the shutdown of the L train. Under the East River, correct. Who rides the L train? A lot of people. The L train ridership, people coming in the morning, typically from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and in the evening, the reverse traffic, but during the day, very, very busy. The ridership is more than a number of the other major transit systems in the united states combined it's a huge ridership north of 700 000 people a day so we knew that this was going to be horribly disruptive but it was a job that had to be tackled do nothing wasn't an option for your listeners out there the reason for that was Superstorm Sandy had wrought havoc on the various tunnels under the East River.

And salt water, the worst possible kind of water, had got into the tunnels, flooded them, ruined systems, signaling systems, comms systems, and degraded the concrete. So when I arrived, there was a plan to shut the tunnel for a year. We could have probably done it in a bit less, to rip out all of the old cabling, rip out all of the old concrete, check the outer lining of the tunnel, and then completely rebuild it and reinstate it. In the meantime, a massive bus service across the Williamsburg Bridge. That was the project I inherited. It should be stressed that had been signed off by the board and ultimately the governor because the governor controls the MTA board. And then that plan changed pretty much overnight.

The governor was Andrew Cuomo. Correct. Often controversial, often popular. I watched this documentary, The End of the Line, controversial, often popular. I watched this documentary, The End of the Line, about this. He goes into the subway tunnel with a bunch of engineering deans from the local universities in hard hats, and he comes out and he announces a few days later, we don't actually have to shut the tunnel down. People have made decisions about where they're going to live. People have made alternative arrangements. Businesses have planned for ways to deal with this shutdown. And now all of that is thrown into question. And incidentally, so is your judgment. Well, yes and no, in that, again, I inherited that plan.

Now, I said that subsequently, because it's true, I did challenge my team when I arrived, because I arrived in January of 2018 and the shutdown. So I had about a year, just under a year to go. And I did say to my team, are we sure that this is the only option? And I was given a very detailed presentation about the way in which we'd gone about successfully repairing the other tunnels and the methodology that had been successfully applied and that would give you probably a hundred year replacement life so i did ask that question but because this plan was so far down the line and because expectations

had been raised and because new yorkers had grudgingly accepted the plan i felt better use of my time was to focus on really making sure that plan worked properly. So along with the DOT commissioner, we did a roadshow around the various affected wards on the Manhattan side and on the Brooklyn side to explain to people how it was going to happen, how we were going to run the bus service, how a bus would literally leave every, something like every 30 seconds

off the Williamsburg Bridge. It was an armada of buses in each direction and what benefits ultimately that would bring. So you could say it was a question of judgment. It was certainly a surprise to me. We got wind of the fact that the governor was going to bring in these academics. Interestingly, and it was a bit of a forerunner

for what was to come, I was not asked to go into that tunnel to have a look. None of the senior MTA top brass were brought into what the plan was going to be. Now, my COO did go down there, but was just literally peppered with questions. When the plan subsequently emerged, we were given, we being the leadership of the MTA, including myself as New York City Transit President, something like three or four hours notice of what this revised plan was going to be. And we were told to come to the governor's chambers,

his offices in midtown Manhattan, to sit through a press conference at which the detail will be announced. We had no input into that revised plan and no foresight of what it would be and I suddenly found myself faced with myriad questions from concerned New Yorkers who were asking for example one why has the plan changed two what is this new plan is safe? So that presented me with a real problem. After the break, Andy Byford will tell me how it all went pear-shaped with Andrew Cuomo. And he'll also talk about a recent wave of violent incidents in public transit,

and why cities like Ottawa and Toronto have struggled with major transit projects. Thanks to everyone who supports this show our partners at the national arts center and the university of toronto's monk school of global affairs and public policy our founding sponsor tell us our title sponsor compass rose and our publishing partners the toronto star and i politics There's an obvious disconnect between yourself and the governor and a growing disconnect between you and the staff of the MTA and the board of the MTA even though you had worked to to remain a cohesive team. Well look the first year because bear in mind i arrived in uh 2018 january of 2018 the first year went really well we uh we were left to our own devices and let me just step back slightly to the governor's credit he signed off on my appointment i went through a

very extensive interview process when i was this person coming from Toronto I had to meet all sorts of different people and and that culminated in a meeting with the governor where he said and I quote Mr Byford can you improve the subway within one year and I said yes governor I can so I set about that and for the first year we were left to get on with it and we drove up subway performance punctuality from a woeful, embarrassing 59% to over 80% and climbing. We tackled things that had not been properly addressed, such as speed restrictions, which had no purpose and which had been left in for historical reasons. We could safely remove those speed restrictions. We could safely recalibrate what are called grade signal timers, and we speeded up the subway service. There were a huge number of things that we did.

We had a big push on cleanliness. We reorganized the way the stations were managed to provide accountability, accountable managers for each group of stations based on a model that I used to be a group station manager in London, and we successfully employed in Toronto, but now in New York. So that first year went really well. And at the Christmas, the turn of 2018 to 2019, I got a rather odd phone call from the governor telling me there is going to be a change to the L project. I can't tell you what it is. Stay away from it. Stay out of it.

It's nothing to do with you. It's not of your making. Stay away, which I thought was rather odd but i appreciated in a way the heads up albeit it was very um mysterious as to what the change was going to be it was only later that when i was then faced with all these people saying how come this plan has changed how do we know it's safe when i said as a as a transit professional fantastic full marks to the governor, kudos to the governor, brilliant that we don't have to shut the line down, but I just need to do an independent safety check, a safety review, a risk assessment to make sure that this new methodology is

actually safe and will last. And that brought me into conflict because it was seen as challenging the plan. I wasn't challenging the plan. I was merely saying, as an ex-safety director, we should just check to make sure it is actually a safe methodology. But that, unfortunately, sowed the seeds for a very difficult second year.

At times during all this, the governor was saying the most astonishing things about the company that you were running. The MTA has been a disgrace to New York State, things like that. Was it obvious at some point that the divorce was real and needed only to be consummated? I didn't want that to happen. And on the contrary, this was my dream job. I was pinching myself, as I said earlier. that to happen. And on the contrary, this was my dream job. I was pinching myself, as I said earlier. I loved it. We were really making progress. And look, at the end of the day,

the governor's the boss. There's no question about that. I'm a 33-year public servant. You are there to make your political masters look good, to do their bidding. I don't think you're their mouthpiece. And you certainly should not do something that's immoral, illegal, or just plain wrong. What you should be doing is trying to persuade behind the scenes, look, there's a reason why we need to do this. And I did try to do that with my desire to see an independent safety assessment. Ultimately, there was an independent safety assessment of sorts. But by that point, because I'd called for it i'd been stripped of 50 of my job my job was cut in half and the um the uh renewal element the fast forward element was taken away and given to another department but yeah i i heard the comments but everyone's entitled to their opinions um i

remember there was a breakfast at which the cleaners the clean cleaners, the hardworking janitors of New York City Transit were mocked for the product they used. Now, okay, you could say the real attack was on the management, but A, that wasn't exactly the product used, and B, who does that? So my problem was, back to my earlier point, you either allow your organisation to be treated as a punch bag and thereby condemn the people that work there to be ridiculed or you stick up for that company but again you do so respectfully i was always i was always very respectful with that principle but also with my other principles in other locations i've never had a problem with an elected official fast forward and forgive the pun to my time in in London, I had a fantastic relationship with the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

It could not have gone better. So, you know, I write it off to experience. I made mistakes. But unfortunately, the fact that my job was cut in half meant I and even the half that was left, which was to run the operation day to day, even that was subject to relentless interference. I just felt I had no choice but to leave. And I did in January of 2020. I guess I've got two questions about that. First of all, near the end of that year, Andrew Cuomo's career goes down in flames. 2020, yes, correct.

Or was it 21? Not like, yeah, I mean, it's close to the, yeah, close to the turn of that year. Governor's got to resign not long after his book on leadership comes out. Is there some polysyllabic German word for how that must have felt to you? Well, I'm a linguist. Look, I'm not going to comment on that. felt to you well i'm a linguist um look i'm not going to comment on that i'm not here to badmouth the governor merely to just reiterate or retell um the chronology of what happened obviously i'm aware of what happened i was by that time in the uk and i watched you know with some

amazement at the that turnout of events and i i regret that that was a relationship i just couldn't make work i i didn't want to end in leave new york city transit under those conditions but in the way it was serendipity i ended up going back to the uk applying for the job as commissioner of transport for london which actually is a way bigger and way more complex organisation even than New York City Transit. And I had a fantastic two and a half years working under Sadiq, the Mayor of London, which we opened the Elizabeth line, I got to meet the Queen, we obviously had to face COVID, we tackled the COVID crisis, and we sorted out the finances, which were in disarray as a result of COVID. So in some ways, things worked out for me. Obviously, the governor had his own issues to face.

The decision to apply a transport for London was not part of a grand plan. It was very much a trick of fate, the strangeness of early COVID. It was. How did that work? Well, had I known in January 2020 that COVID was going to be the horror that it was for the employees of New York City Transit and for customers, obviously, I would not have I would have carried on. I'd have stuck at it. You don't abandon ship in the face of a massive storm. But back in January 2020, yes, we were aware that there

was this odd thing coming out of Wuhan, China. I think possibly one case had appeared, but, you know, we've been through bird flu and various other things. And at the time, I didn't really think it would be that big a deal. But what I did know was having left the MTA, I had to change my visa because I was recruited to the MTA on what's called an O-1, which is a very hard visa to come by. And I had to give that back when I left the MTA. So no problem. My wife was on an L-2, sorry, an L-1,

and I could get an L-2 on the back of her L-1 visa. The trouble was the wait time in both New York and Toronto was excessive. Technically, you can be thrown out after 30 days if you don't have a visa. So I did my research and I realized that London was only a one-week wait time. So I flew to London to change my visa. And while I was there, things massively accelerated. The travel ban came on initially for people coming from Europe, no flights back to the US. And to my horror, the next day, no more flights from the UK.

I didn't think much of it at the time. My wife was on the other side of the Atlantic. We both thought, well, two, three weeks, maybe I'll just have an extended holiday in the UK and I'll go back. I realized by early April that wasn't happening. So I did put in for the TFL job and I'm honored that they gave it to me. I hope I paid them back. I was looking at on-time statistics for various transit systems. London's tube system runs quite well in the normal course of things. It must have been a bit of a relief to have that as the ground state. Very much so. And it was a system with which I was very familiar. Having said that, when I went back to the holding company now, Transport for London, where back in my day it was London

Transport, which sounds like semantics, but it's actually a different model. TfL, which was nascent when I left to go to Australia, had really matured into a really impressive organisation, one of the, if not the, biggest integrated transit systems in the world. And lots of lessons, I think, that can be picked up from jurisdictions around the world. Among other things, what they had done very successfully was really invested in re-equipping the tube, the oldest underground system in the world, 18 that first section and particularly in re-signaling and that of course had informed the program i was pushing in new york namely fast forward with a system called cbtc which is communications based train control which in a

nutshell putting it simply is a system whereby the trains don't rely on line side signals to maintain distances effectively the trains talk to rely on line side signals to maintain distances. Effectively, the trains talk to each other. They know where the train is ahead, what speed it's doing. Is it speeding up? Is it slowing down? So you can safely run trains closer together. Ergo, you can run more trains. So you can have a more intensive service.

So I was really pushing CBTC in New York, which was another bone of contention because it was seen by some as a 1980s technology. It isn't. It was grounded then, founded then, but it has since developed. And London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris my predecessor, the former commissioner. But what I was inheriting was two major problems. One, the impact of COVID on a number of fronts. The finances were decimated. The ridership had collapsed. The morale of the organization was rock bottom. And of course, people were concerned about the health implications. people were concerned about the health implications. And two, I inherited the very over budget, late running Elizabeth line project, which at that time was still run by a separate entity, the Crossrail board. I insisted as a condition of joining TFL, as I poised my pen

above the signature line, I need to have direct carriage of that project. I would feel uneasy about not owning it, even though it brought the reputational hit or risk to me personally. If we're to get it open with no further delays and no further recourse to public funding, we must have direct carriage of it. We did take carriage of it within 95 days. You've been very generous in sharing the story of Andy Byford in practice. Let's talk about Andy Byford in theory. I'm fascinated by this idea of somebody who hops from jurisdiction to jurisdiction doing substantially comparable jobs. Have you ever talked to Mark Carney about that, about being a central banker in two different countries? Mark Carney about that, about being a central banker in two different countries?

I'm terrible at maths. I'll be honest with you. No, I haven't. I do think that there are transferable skills. And look, there's nothing special about me. The same could be said for any of my peers at any of the major transit agencies across the world. It does teach you so much in terms of crisis management, stakeholder management, customer service acumen. So I do think the skills are transferable. But in answer to your question, no, I've never spoken to the former governor of the Bank of England, of course. I've heard it argued that this sort of lateral move across jurisdiction is something we should see more often in more other fields. move across jurisdiction is something we should see more often in more other fields. That, for instance, a good next mayor of Toronto could be someone who's been a good mayor of Halifax or Thunder Bay. Do you buy that? Well, I do think there is definite merit in employing or allowing enabling movement from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because everywhere is different and there's a mutual benefit.

You, the person moving, you bring skills and knowledge and experience from somewhere else. But equally, you learn about the new jurisdiction. Nowhere's perfect. Everywhere has strengths and everywhere has areas that they need to improve upon. So where you really get benefit is combining new blood with an existing excellent team.

And I've always been very careful as a CEO, incoming CEO, to not be the big I am. Okay, so I was at New York before. I didn't turn up in London and talk about New York all the time. And similarly with Toronto, you've got to be humble

and you've got to learn from the existing experience of the team that you are inheriting. And a really good team is made up of that kind of dynamics and new blood and some residents or residual talent. I also think as a CEO, it's wholly demoralizing if you turn up as a newbie and you promptly set about bringing in all of your own people or replacing absolutely everyone. I tried to achieve a 70% there or thereabouts, 70-75% in-house promotion, such that you do give hope to people from within the organisation. You don't demoralise them by thinking, oh, Andy only brings in his own people. You've got to get the balance right. But make no apology for on occasions

bringing in people from outside. So I do think that moving across jurisdictions and within reason between disciplines actually has real merit. And I have toyed in the past with going off to, say, an airline because although I'd have a hell of a lot to learn, I think there are some transferable skills.

Now, it's 2023. I was in New York a few months ago and I'm reluctant to go back because it's very hard to get around that city and there's increasing concern about crime in the subway. Toronto just laid on extra shifts of police because there's real concern about crime in the subway. Are you worried that the

bond of faith between people and how they get around is being tested and even broken in this post-COVID world? Well, I think there's some evidence of that, and it's certainly not unique to those two locations. I think that a number of transit systems are experiencing the same phenomenon, and I think it's very important to understand what the root cause of that is and and typically it falls to the um the transit agency to come up with all the solutions when some of the root causes are outside their immediate control let's take for example my time in new york we would be absolutely castigated constantly castigated for the number of homeless people in the system

and told you know you've got to do something get rid of them kick them out well one i think just quotes kicking them out is it's pretty inhumane they've got these human beings uh who have to have somewhere safe to go to and i remember speaking to a homeless person once and saying to him well so why you know why don't you go to one of the hostels and he said have you ever been to one of them they're seriously scary so you have to look at the root so why don't you go to one of the hostels? And he said, have you ever been to one of them? They're seriously scary. So you have to look at the root cause. Why are people in there in the first place? And identify and fund proper alternatives

if you are to expect and ask people to go elsewhere. I think there's also a perception issue in that, and a reality, because these statistics don't lie, but people maybe have got out of the habit of using mass transit to now come back is a bit of a leap of faith. You kind of got out of the habit of using transport. But also, if there are fewer people around, which there are, I mean, back in London, it's only up to 70, 80 percent of normal. Then there are fewer eyes and ears. So maybe you do feel a little more vulnerable. But

having said that, there are real statistics that are going the wrong way. So I think transport systems have to work with elected officials and with social service agencies to identify what needs to be done humanely to tackle the increases in crime, understand what those statistics are saying, what types of crimes are happening, and taking, in some cases, short-term measures. I don't think they're necessarily sustainable in the long term, to add police, to add transit officers, to give people reassurance that it is a controlled environment, and that if you do get hassled, there is someone there who can help you. Certainly, we should not, as transit professionals, sit back and do nothing. If you allow this perception or reality to become a perception or vice versa, then you will only exacerbate people's move away from public transport if

they think it's unsafe. That is a killer for any transit system. You really do not want people to lose faith in it from a safety and security perspective, or they leave and they don't come back. But I think it's important to underline your first point, which is that police are welcome, police are needed in the short term, but that the real answers have a lot more to do with housing, shelter, social supports. Definitely. I mean, again, back to that New York example where people would clamor for us, you know, you need to get these people out of the system. OK, so NYPD will come up and arrest someone or ask them to leave the station. Sometimes arrest, sometimes not. Within sometimes minutes, the person will come back in.

Why? Because it's warm, because it's seen by those homeless people, you know, human beings to be a safe environment that they can go and lie down there and maybe are even being scrutinised by CCTV, but there's people about, so they have needs as well. So I think you've got to get to the bottom of what is the root solution, the root cause, and then the solution, permanent solution, sustainable solution, so that people don't feel the need to go into the subway and compounded by or

wrong word northern compounded complementary to my customers the other customers the paying customers should not be subjected to people lying around on seats maybe making a mess behaving in an anti-social manner so i always try to address it from two perspectives one have some humanity for the person um you know who does find themselves in unfortunate circumstances and who needs to have proper solutions to their issues but two equally not tolerating that because my customers have paid for a smooth clean hassle free service from a to b and shouldn't have to put up with in sanitary conditions for example so it is it's a way bigger issue and the broader issue of crime is way big way bigger than transit systems being blamed for

all of society's ills we've got to look at well why are there more people out on the streets with mental health issues why are there more people maybe who feel that they can rob or assault people with impunity on the transit system? Yes, the transit system should make sure its CCTV and other security paraphernalia are working properly, that there are lots of staff around to help out. But the transit system on its own can't solve society's problems. It's got to be a team effort. You talk about the danger of loss of faith. There's another manifestation of that, which is the increasing concern that people have

about government's ability to build and expand the transit systems that we have. We're in Ottawa. There's been a half-decade psychodrama about the ability to build a light rail system in Ottawa. Major subway expansion projects in Toronto seem to be taking forever. And I've started to notice literature from all over which says it's gotten so hard to build stuff that we've fallen out of the habit of building stuff. Is that a concern of yours?

Well, certainly it's a concern of mine if transit expansion gets a bad name for always being late, always being over budget, for the service to not work straight out of the box. And let's take the Elizabeth line as an example. It was late. It was over budget. I couldn't turn that clock back.

What I could do was stop it getting any worse. But also we pay huge attention to service reliability from day one we wanted it to work immaculately out of the box and and actually we had a near i'm going to say near because there was one fire alarm went off in error near flawless startup which was fantastic um but I I do think back to our earlier discussion around um across uh pollination of ideas I think the days of a transit system being able to do everything on its own are probably behind us because you have through various efficiencies and cutbacks over the years not every transit system has the capability to execute a mega project they've definitely got in-house capability there's brilliant people in the ttc new york city transit tfl but if you can put together

really good consortia of uh experts who have the ability to put together a realistic funding package and who know understand the the fine art and the discipline of program management, who understand how to go about the civil stage and then the systems integration stages, I think you give yourself a much better chance of success, particularly if you use proven products. I always preach that. Why reinvent the wheel every time?

Why do you have to have brand new innovation and be the first in the field? There's a reason why some airlines are never the launch customer of a new plane. They don't want to be. They want other airlines to iron out the flaws. Then they put in their order. So likewise, I advocate if, say, the Japanese have a train that works superbly well, why wouldn't we look at that?

Why wouldn't we look at proven products? superbly well but why wouldn't we look at that why wouldn't we look at proven products so i think um transport organizations have to have leadership that's prepared to have those conversations with their stakeholders who might be forcing you otherwise to use a certain methodology or a product where that really the the politician needs to be given straight truths i used to call it you know it's truth to power uh boss you know can i just explain to you why it is my strong advice is not to go down that road the other uh pitfall into which so many mega projects fall is being steamrollered into committing to a deadline and a budget before either has been properly assessed because you are headed for a fall yeah you just um you're you're forced to go down the

lowest bid uh route which is good in terms of payment initially value to the taxpayer but not in the long run if that proves to be hopelessly inaccurate and or if you've fallen for a contractor who puts in a suicidal bid knowing they'll make up that and way more in variations. So take your time, get the budget right, get the deadline right, the schedule right, and then be held absolutely account to that. But if you own that, then you're more likely to deliver against it. This whole conversation is going to be very foreign to people across vast expanses of the Canadian landscape who are not near a bus stop or a subway stop. And a lot of our politics is based on that. It's based on

an opposition between the large amounts of public funding that move people around cities and the large number of ridings that aren't in cities. Did that ever impinge on your work? Or do you get the people who just say, well, that's all just city stuff? No, I absolutely do get that. Sometimes, quite often, an argument will be mounted, well, why should I pay for that? I live in rural, insert name of place there. Why should I pay for the mass transit of these people who are fortunate enough and affluent enough to live in a major city? I kind of get the argument at face value.

enough to live in a major city. I kind of get the argument at face value. But what I would say is, well, that same city with its vibrant transit system is generating the wealth that cross subsidizes other attributes across the wider geographical area. If you've got a geographical area that's widespread, where the cost of providing a service to the truly rural part of the country or the province or the county whatever it may be if you apply pure economics to it you just say we can't afford to do that if you can cross subsidize that by the recess of a city whose lifeblood is a successful transit system then everyone benefits so i don't really buy the, I don't use that. So I don't see why I should pay for it. I don't have kids. So I could say, well, why should I pay for schools? Well, because I see the broader social benefit of a well-educated populace, you know, and if we go

down that road, you'd have to have a sort of smorgasbord of what you personally choose to pay from what you don't pay for. Some public utilities like running water, it's better paid for by everyone. So I hope that answers your question. I do get that some public transport offerings won't cover their costs like a rural bus service, but to the people who live there, it's an absolute lifeline. So I've got no problem with operating a mixed system whereby some routes more than cover their costs of highly trafficked, highly intensive downtown route in order to keep going to maintain the viability of something that face value doesn't wash its face. The thing I've been wondering throughout this whole hour is, do you know what you're doing next? The thing I've been wondering throughout this whole hour is, do you know what you're doing next?

And are you job hunting? Sort of and yes. I came back here on a self-sponsored visa, which, as I've said, I'm very grateful. I had a brilliant immigration lawyer. That does mean I can work anywhere in the U.S. and for whomsoever I want, as long as it's within that field of transportation. So that gives me a boundary. I have had a bit of a holiday, which has been quite nice. I've been thumbing through vinyl in record shops. I've been watching my football team from afar on video, soccer team,

and now actively honing in on a couple of very compelling opportunities. So I've been flattered by the amount of approaches that I've had. I want to do something that adds value. I'm certainly not ready to go out to pasture. I want to do something that adds value. I'm certainly not ready to go out to pasture. I want to give back. I want to pay back the US for giving me this green card. So I want to have a job that adds value, keeps me interested, gives me more experience. So watch this space. I'm at the business end of a couple of very interesting discussions. You can bet that I'll be watching because I've been watching from afar for much of

your career. Thank you for being so generous with your time and with your story. You're very welcome, Paul. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hayley Choi.

Our executive producer is Lisa Gabriel. Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. I'm I'm I'm