“There’s a great story to be told of British and London transport expertise, which is being sought out once again” Andy Byford, then-CEO of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), mused when we last saw him at the UITP Global Public Transport Conference in Montréal in May 2017. Now he faces a larger challenge – New York.
Andy Byford accepting the Transit Champion Award from TTCRiders
CEO of the TTC since 2012, Byford led a renaissance of the underfunded and downtrodden transit system. Torontonians justifiably considered Byford one of their own, so his resignation in November came as a great civic shock. His reasons soon became clear – Byford was off to New York, leaving the third largest transit system in North America for the first.
An Englishman in New York
Byford has joined the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) as President of New York City (NYC) Transit, the agency responsible for the city’s subways, buses, paratransit services and the Staten Island Railway, effective on 1 January 2018. MTA Transit has nearly 50,000 employees operating 26 subway routes and 5,712 buses across the five boroughs.
New York and Toronto, the financial and media centres of their respective countries, have a lot in common. Peter Ustinov called Toronto “New York run by the Swiss” but the similarities extend beyond government and business to mindset, swagger and – most pertinently – failing subway infrastructure.
The New York Metro is creaking with age. Breakdowns are frequent. Meanwhile, the bus system is losing riders to rideshare companies. Residents and visitors alike are finding the entire network increasingly unreliable.
Many of these problems were caused by something with which London’s own network is painfully familiar – an investment holiday. One that, in New York’s case, has endured since the 2008 financial crisis. This was made worse by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and an ineffective and confusing management reorganisation which meant that only emergency repairs were funded.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a subway state of emergency on 29 June 2017, then unveiled an emergency plan to repair signals, track and train equipment. This will concentrate on signals that break down the most frequently, stem tunnel leaks that damage infrastructure and clean tracks to reduce fires.
Toronto’s crumbling system
The TTC had been a transit world leader in the 1970s, building integrated, barrier-free surface transit terminals at most of its subway stations. The city had also constructed a suburban subway extension to a large shopping centre on a major highway instead of building an urban expressway.
Since then however, the city had rested on its laurels. Practically and culturally, the TTC stagnated. Meanwhile, its politicians continued to tout the myth of the TTC’s world class operations, whilst also underfunding the system.
After a series of internally promoted Chief General Managers, the TTC realised in 2011 that an outsider would be necessary to bring new ideas and leadership to correct the system’s failing reliability and reputation. Fortunately, they had already hired Chris Upfold, a 10 year London Underground veteran, as their first Chief of Customer Service. He suggested Byford apply for the resulting Chief Operating Officer position. Carrying a similar Underground pedigree, he was hired.
London Underground Training
The grandson of a bus driver and the son of a London Transport employee, Byford began his own transit career at London Underground as a station foreman in 1989. Soon promoted to Station Manager of King’s Cross St Pancras Underground station, he presided over the tenth anniversary memorial of the disastrous 1987 fire that killed 31. Byford has claimed that this occasion solidified in his mind the absolute need for safety in transport.
From that position he was made General Manager of the Central, Bakerloo and Victoria lines, among the busiest in the system, overseeing a period in which customer satisfaction and operational performance both began to improve. This period saw him work under now-Transport Commissioner, Mike Brown. Some of the techniques Byford has used in his post-London career clearly have their origins in his training here. This includes his focus on quick wins like cleaning the system, improving signage and making delay announcements regular, turning around employees’ and riders’ perceptions, and identifying and fixing the root causes of reliability issues.
LU approach applied to Sydney
After serving as Operations Director at South Eastern Trains and then Southern Railway, Byford was recruited by Sydney, Australia to head operations of their Rail Corp agency (now Transport for New South Wales – TfNSW). This operates commuter and urban rail for Sydney under the CityRail banner (now called Sydney Trains), as well as intercity services under Country Link services (now called NSW TrainLink).
Sydney has a similar funding structure as Toronto – with separate regional (state / province) and city contributions. Correspondingly his responsibilities as Chief Operating Officer had a more political dimension than his posts in Britain.
Turning around Toronto
When Byford first arrived in Toronto in 2011 from Sydney, he was shocked to discover that the TTC had no Corporate or Strategic Plan. He also quickly noted the lack of attention to what he’d come to regard as the core basics – safety, punctuality, reliability, cleanliness and customer experience. Indeed soon after Byford took over, the TTC made headlines internationally when a photo of a subway collector asleep in his ticket booth went viral. Meanwhile, trains often broke down.
Public opinion of the Commission hit at an all-time low.
Byford advocated a policy of owning these problems, addressing them directly in a clear, honest fashion, often personally delivered.
To reverse the TTC’s poor image, he instigated a weekly full-page newspaper advert aimed at providing riders with updates on new infrastructure, routes, construction progress, key issues, and a TTC employee profile, to provide insight into the Commission’s workings. He also wrote his own column, which helped riders understand the progress and the problems that the Commission faced in providing transit service for over a million rides every day. This both improved communication and began to change public opinion of the Commission. Based upon his experience on the Underground, Byford also became a visible presence on the system, meeting employees and the public. Whenever a major incident occurred, he would often attend in person. This was rarely the case with previous General Managers.
Deeper changes
Byford’s changes in Toronto extended beyond the cosmetic. In 2012 he was appointed CEO and his focus shifted to a top-to-bottom modernization of the TTC. This involved a comprehensive overhaul of its infrastructure, its processes and its culture. His vision was to return the Commission to being “A transit system that makes Toronto proud”.
Revealingly, what Byford has indicated he is most proud of during his time in Toronto is improving the prevailing culture at the TTC. Until his arrival this was largely dominated by a resistance to outside ideas and a ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome. Something Byford would no doubt have found highly reminiscent of his early years at the Underground – not least because it was partly responsible for the Kings Cross fire.
Byford is reminiscent of a sports coach, getting more out of his 15,000 strong team. But he hasn’t been afraid to wield an axe, firing two long standing TTC executives who did not buy in to his Five Year Plan. That plan saw Byford implemented a variety of changes, some clearly based on his London experience.
He created station manager positions, for front line customer service, operations, and technical response assistance, directly based on the TfL role. He also overhauled the decision making process, replacing a system which prioritised the opinions of transit managers with one that focused on analysis of performance and maintenance data. Indeed to support this, he initiated a complete modernisation of the TTC’s antiquated computer systems and processes, some still dating back to the system’s 1970s heyday.
His time in charge saw progress made on the progressive replacement of a 60-year-old signal system, track and mechanicals, which are becoming brittle. He also brought the troubled 8.5km, six station Line 1 subway extension back on track to open successfully. He also oversaw the introduction of Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) on Line 1 in a phased rollout. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was led by engineers who had previously installed CBTC on London’s Victoria line.
Recently opened Line 1 Extension Vaughan Metro Centre station. TTC
Perhaps of most interest to New Yorkers is his record with the unions and smart ticketing. Byford successfully negotiated transit union buy-in to One Person Operation (OPO) for the latest T1 walkthrough subway cars on the short Line 4. He also implemented a smart fare card across the network to finally replace the archaic system of tokens, tickets and magnetic stripe passes then in place.
In all this, he was assisted by Upfold, who led on updating the obsolescent internal processes and supporting technology, as well as improving customer communications. Upfold himself will be the subject of a future article.
In his five years as CEO, the transit service substantially improved in Toronto. Subway delay minutes are down 21% year-on-year, delay incidents down 7%, track fires – a major cause of delay – down 42% and short turns, long the bane of bus and streetcar riders’ lives, down nearly 90%. In addition, the system is cleaner, information is clearer and, over the last five years, customer satisfaction has risen significantly.
These improvements resulted in the TTC being recognised by the American Public Transportation Association as its 2017 Outstanding Transit System of the Year.
Indeed Toronto riders, staff, and even politicians were incredibly disappointed to see him leave. Riders liked him because subway reliability improved, because he provided clear explanations and because they saw him on television during incidents as well as at stations eager to speak to them. Byford didn’t own a car in Toronto, practicing what he preached by taking the TTC to get around the city, and this did not go unnoticed. Indeed talking to Byford in public is an interesting experience, as people gravitate towards him to tell him of their complaints or commendations. Given the importance Byford has put on training his managers over the last five years, this is highly likely, and will be one of his Toronto legacies.
Staff, meanwhile, liked him because he was no-nonsense, passionate, provided clear goals and treated everyone fairly. Politicians liked him because he delivered on his promises and made them look capable (barring delays by suppliers like Bombardier, whose perpetually late streetcar deliveries are worthy of an article series of their own).
All in all, the TTC’s loss is almost certainly the MTA’s gain.
Welcome to Broadway
The move to New York sees Byford enter territory with which he is at least somewhat familiar, having served on the MTA Transportation Reinvention Commission in 2014. He also served on the MTA’s 2017 Genius Transit Challenge panel, where he detailed the efforts taken to modernize and improve Toronto’s subway system.
Heading the MTA, Byford will be responsible for leading the deep rehabilitation of one of the largest transit systems in the world. This includes successfully implementing the Subway Action Plan launched this summer to modernize the delay-riddled system. These problems prompted the New York Times’ recent exhaustive investigative report which found an agency dragged down by political interference and ineptitude, byzantine management layers, and plagued by overpriced contractors and consultants.
The task is mammoth. 6,400 subway cars operate on 665 miles of track, using 13,000 signals and 1,600 switches. It is akin to the repair bill faced by London Underground in the 1970s and 1980s, which took two decades to complete.
Of the 82,000 delays recorded in June, more than a third were attributed to overcrowding. About 15,000 stemmed from planned work to repair the system’s failing signals and worn track. There were about 10,800 delays caused by signal and track problems and about 2,200 delays created by train equipment trouble.
Another New York Subway delay
The New York Times reported that just before the 20 June 2017 electrical system breakdown, more than $400 million from the MTA’s signal funding had instead been used to pay for station enhancements prioritised by Governor Cuomo.
The game plan for NYC
New York has many of the same system issues that Byford dealt with in Toronto – life expired signalling, relays and tripcocks, inadequate funding and political interference.
The MTA has already put a number of steps into action, all of which Byford will oversee. This includes modernising outdated equipment and signalling systems. To expedite this work, Byford is considering closing subway lines down on weekends or longer, as he has done in London and Toronto. In the city that never sleeps however, the 24 hour subway is viewed as a necessity and a right. This attitude is changing, as New York officials have already announced a 15-month shutdown of the L train to repair the Hurricane Sandy damaged tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Nonetheless, it will be a tough sell.
Byford will also need to take the Second Avenue Subway into detailed design of Phase 2 (which will be the subject of an upcoming LR article) and implement a new smart fare card system across the network, replacing the MetroCard and allowing fare capping. The new card also has its roots in London – the technology is supplied by Cubic and is based on London’s Oyster system. It will also be used on the region’s commuter railroads, providing intermodal convenience for the very first time.
The Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX) LRT line is a city initiative, but there Byford will be working with former TTC Chair Adam Giambrone to maximise interconnections with MTA services.
And the East Side Access project will bring Long Island Rail Road commuter trains directly into Grand Central from 2022, adding thousands of passengers into the heart of the subway network every rush hour.
Parallel political structures
Many of these projects are similar to those that Byford has successfully carried out in London, Sydney and Toronto. The main wildcards, however, are the politicians.
Fortunately, Toronto’s tri-level government structure – federal, province of Ontario, and city – has provided Byford with experience working in a complex political situation. However, this won’t necessarily make the task easier. In both Toronto and New York, ruling governments dole out transit funding (or don’t) according to ideology and political need. As capital projects typically require funding from all three levels, reaching agreement across these levels is always difficult and fleeting.
Byford will need to manipulate New York’s infamous politics to obtain the funding and make the improvements that the system needs and he’ll need to hit the ground running, as he’ll be jumping straight into a battle between the New York Governor and Mayor over funding the subway repairs.
LT International: The Next Generation
Byford is one of an increasingly high-profile generation of former Underground and British Rail managers that have successfully exported themselves. In a way, it is reminiscent of the London Transport International consulting company, which contracted the organisation’s expertise to urban railways in 25 cities around the world from 1976 to the mid-1990s. As the best managers had been chosen for these contracts, however, LT’s own operations suffered. This and the urgent need to turn around London’s decaying transport system in the 1990s brought an end to the consulting business.
London Transport International
The aforementioned Upfold is another member of the diaspora. So is Howard Collins, who succeeded Byford at Sydney’s TfNSW and is now CEO. Another former British Rail and TfL director, Rob Mason, worked with them both at Rail Corp, and is now retired.
They are members of a modern British transport manager diaspora who mostly share one key experience – they spent their formative years in London Transport (or British Rail) during the post-Kings Cross resurgence. This saw London Underground – and later TfL – and British Rail undertake their own soul searching. They were forced to revamp their own stagnant structure and operations. Forward thinking and innovative management was necessary to wring the most from clapped out trains and buses and to move increasing numbers of passengers as quickly and safely as possible. Even some rail engineers and technical managers have joined the diaspora, ex-LU manager Mike Palmer and engineer Peter Tomlin brought their expertise installing CBTC for the Jubilee line, to do the same on the TTC’s Line 1.
As these bodies – and then the privatised train operating companies (TOCs) – refined their training regimes and honed the management expertise, transporting more passengers was possible with the same infrastructure, earning Britain’s transport managers a reputation for an ability to ‘sweat assets’ (and improve them) that has caught the eyes of many transit agencies overseas struggling with similar problems.
Sydney, Toronto and Boston are all cities who have benefited from that diaspora. Now New York joins this club.
UPDATE: TfL has just announced that Andy Byford will be TfL’s new Commissioner, replacing Mike Brown, effective 29 June 2020.
Andy has come back home to Broadway (albeit 55 Broadway has now been sold) – as the top boss. Welcome back, we’ve missed you. More analysis to follow
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An important side note here, quoting Byford’s departure speech…
“Five years ago, incredibly, there had never been a woman on the TTC executive. Now 50 per cent of my senior team are women, all on merit, and both the executive and the next two levels below are increasingly diverse.”
If that’s not another fantastic legacy to leave behind, what is?
I wish Byford the very best of luck, he’s gonna need it!
Certainly driven and challenging.
With TfL’s expanded map where do NYC & London now rank in world terms for mileage and passengers ?
Living just across the lake from Toronto, in Niagara, I have had a reasonably close-up view of Byford’s tenure at the TTC. There’s no doubt he has improved its image among riders, and he has brought to fruition a number of projects, including the Line 1 extension, that were initiated before he arrived. However, he was never able to overcome the chronic political meddling that has always bedevilled the TTC. He is on record as supporting the massively costly one-stop extension of Line 2 in Scarborough: this travesty will cost C$ 3.5 billion (and rising) and will have fewer riders than the LRT it will replace! It will be interesting to see if he will admit what he really thinks about it now that he is safely in New York.
Despite the Toronto region’s explosive population growth, the TTC is a Mickey Mouse operation compared to the systems in either London or New York. Byford has a big job ahead of him, and people in these parts will wish him well.
Whilst not disputing Mike Palmer’s capability, he is not an engineer and he worked on the Jubilee CBTC not the Victoria line. I don’t recognise Peter Tomlin from any of the LU Upgrade projects. [Thanks, I corrected the text. LBM]
If he hadn’t just got a new job this would have been a great recommendation for New York to take him!
It’s probably paywalled, but the NYT’s article on subway construction costs (referred to above) deserves a link. The core problem identified is that everybody involved in subway construction gives generously to the politicians. It’s not clear how that can be solved by anybody at the MTA.
That said, there must be significant scope for improvement. Another recent NYT article notes that the ticket halls in stations are run by a different division to the platforms so station staff in the former aren’t allowed to go down to the latter, even to assist in emergencies. To an uneducated foreign eye that seems insane.
Lawyerboy
Another recent NYT article notes that the ticket halls in stations are run by a different division to the platforms so station staff in the former aren’t allowed to go down to the latter, even to assist in emergencies. To an uneducated foreign eye that seems insane.
No more “Insane” than in this country, where platform staff are not allowed on the track any more & don’t have the “safety training”‘.
See also the case where a wheelchair passenger fell on the track & was rescued by a platform staff member, who was then promptly suspended by his wonderful employer – though IIRC there was a public fuss about that & it went very quiet ….
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mind you, it’s not as bad as Highbury & Islington was just after privatisation, where the tracks were a good 20cm deep in rubbish & a huge, sleek rat was surveying it all from a platform drain – I always thought it was a very good metaphor – what a pity I didn’t have a camera at that moment …
Hmm. I thought ranting about new restrictions caused by “Elf and Safety” had gone a bit quiet since Grenfell, and quite right too. Forbidding platform staff to go on the track unnecessarily is a perfectly sensible restriction. Rules quite validly ban “heroic” rescues which might make things worse. If someone judges it right to defy the rules, then immediate suspension is the correct response by the employer – even if (as in this case) the outcome is good. (Though arguably it would have been just as good without staff rule-breaking, as some passengers were already on the track rescuing the person). Followed (as happened in the Southend case) by re-instatement once there has been an investigation. (There was also a press suggestion that the staff member neglected their possibly overriding duty to get trains stopped, but the investigation did not bear this out).
I can well understand forbidding platform staff to go on the track. Forbidding station staff to go onto the platform, however, baffles me.
Lawyerboy: Indeed. I am tempted to say “this is America. They do things differently there”. But I won’t.
Great article! Small correction though with regard to the section on Sydney, CityRail is now called Sydney Trains, and Country Link is now called NSW TrainLink, since about 2013 I think.
[Cheers! Text updated. LBM]
Good article, very interesting.
I assume it was intentional to use North American terminology and spelling? Does LR have a consistent style guide to this effect (i.e. terminology/spelling to reflect the locale/system being discussed?).
Just my opinion but I think the word “diaspora” is overused in the last section.
@Anonymous at 02.27
Our LR Style Guide recommends using local terms when writing of other cities, so yes, North American terminology and spelling was used.
Shades of Royston Vasey…
Andy Byford has started to make his mark in New York City with a plan to fix the subway network, starting with upgrading the signal system to improve capacity. He costs it at
$19 billion.
LBM…….wow, that’s ambitious. One assumes it would be the roll out of the CBTC systems tested on the Canarsie and Flushing lines?
@ 100&30 – yep the plan seems to have four main elements
– CBTC upgrades on the subway
– overhaul of the bus network
– a fully accessible subway network
– a revised organisation structure at NYCTA to underpin / improve delivery of the wider plan,
based on some twitter commentary he is already being undermined by thicko politicians advocating “driverless car” technology as an alternative to CBTC (proven tech) on the subway. “rolls eyes until they fall out of my skull”.
The big issue is funding. You can have all the plans in the world but if the politicians won’t / can’t find the money then he’s stuffed. The politics in NYC and State are so poisonous it’s unreal. It makes the Khan / Grayling mutual hatred look like a love affair.
WW….Wow – driverless cars to carry the loads the subway can carry. What planet are these people on. However, if they were to make the money available, they would come up against a problem with mustering enough people with the right skills and experience to design the applications and fit out all the lines and trains. This is analogous to the shortage of skills in the UK which is just one of the factors that has caused electrification to over-run and over-spend.
Just a thought about the US signalling market. For the last few years contractors have been working hell for leather to implement PTC (positive train control – think automatic train protection of various types) across vast swathes of the US main line network to meet various federal deadlines and spurred on by a number of tragic recent incidents that might have been prevented by this kind of technology. The industry there must have significantly increased their workforce and skilled up to the latest digital techniques, yet just like contractors at the end of the UK TPWS programme, they face a cliff edge in terms of workload once all this work is finished. Perhaps Andy Byford has realised that there is a one time opportunity to exploit this industry capability to expedite his technology upgrade on the subway. Without the subway CBTC work following on from PTC, there’s a risk that large numbers of expensively trained specialist technical staff might be lost to the signalling industry and it could take a long time and a great deal of expense to remobilise at the scale required in the future.
@130 – Are the politicians concerned naively suggesting applying ‘driverless car technology’ to the subway trains rather than what they see as expensive bespoke railway signalling technology? There is a degree of technology transfer from the autonomous road vehicle field already in certain transit fields, forward radar and lidar obstacle detection for buses and trams for instance, but if they’re in any way applicable I’d be far more comfortable with such technologies being integrated into fast high density subways by established rail specialists such as Thales or Siemens rather than (say) the autonomous car development team at Uber!
Mark Townend…. Point taken; I had misread WW’s comment. That said, rolling out established technology rather than something that is barely out of the laboratory will always be cheaper and quicker (and if anyone thinks the autonomous vehicles are more developed they are deluding themselves).
I know you know this Mark, but I’ll say it anyway. Metros are ideal for centralised control, and modern CBTC systems do it really quite well. Applying tech designed to solve a different problem (random origins and destinations with random routes) needs lots of thought, development and test; not speedy roll out on a very large metro.
Followers of the Night Tube may be interested that Andy Byford is apparantly proposing cancelling 24 hour service on some lines in the City That Never Sleeps…
https://www.wnyc.org/story/big-bold-controversial-plan-coming-mta
There is a follow up piece in the NYT post the publication…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/nyregion/mta-plan-andy-byford.html
Short term, there are some improvements already signed off…
https://www.wnyc.org/story/mta-add-few-more-trainsduring-peak-hours
@AP – Suspending for a prolonged period rather than cancelling 24-hour service, surely?
It might not fully return, but that doesn’t seem to be the plan – rather removing it for a significant length of time to allow night time maintenance and upgrades is. Of course, part of that is politics – NYC wears the 24-hour subway as a badge of pride (even though usage isn’t great, and the base 3tph frequency is not much to sing about either) and stopping it permanently, even on part of the network, would be too radical.
@Mark Townend, 130
There are a number of pundits who are promoting driverless cars as the solution to urban transport problems. A recent study in Lisbon found that car sharing and driverless cars could handle all the off-peak transport needs of the city. Strangely quiet on what happens in the peaks, though and with no exploration of the economics of having two different vehicle fleets for the peak as opposed to the off peak. Some people just won’t be told that cars aren’t the ideal answer to every transport problem.
Andy Byford has great political skill which more than compensates for his not really knowing one end of a train from another. At the TTC he had to navigate the Trumpian lunacy of the late mayor, Rob Ford. And he succeeded. He is one of the few Underground managers I ever knew who was as highly regarded by his bosses as his subordinates. His non engineering background means he sees things as a passenger (ok customer). The fact he supports Plymouth Argyle should not be held against him. Some of my colleagues think he can’t lose at the NYCTA as he is bringing the subway up from such a low ebb. I’m not so sure. But he’ll give it a good go and could well pull it off.
An update on Andy Byford’s New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s progress from
New Yorker magazine. Well worth reading.
Andy Byford NY MTA President “I’ve just had a robust conversation with Neu”—the French transportation company, which is more than a year behind schedule on the delivery of those vacuum trains. “They told me shipping would take six weeks. I said, ‘No way. We need them now.’ Put them in a bloody Antonov and fly them over here.”
They already operate a couple of Vac Trains
https://youtu.be/e_t3HwUulMs
There is a new third one now
https://youtu.be/DIV_cTJUqa8
The most extraordinary thing from that New Yorker article:
Byford has not heard from de Blasio since his arrival, in January. “Bit weird. I should ring him up,” Byford said.
Also, the persistent, erm “borrowing” of MTA’s money by Cuomo.
Nothing will be possible unless that is stopped. ( I think )
Yes but think of the politics. It’s as if we reverted to the time when LRT was a nationalised industry run by the government – but this time the government and legislature is based in Leeds. All the hostility of the rest of the country towards London would now be focussed through a north of England lens. New York City has a really hard time as a result.
@Greg T: the persistent, erm “borrowing” of MTA’s money by Cuomo
Not so different to “borrowing” TfL’s money to pay for the Garden Bridge, perhaps.
Another update on Andy Byford in New York City from the New York Times Subway Chief may quit over tensions with Cuomo.
To echo the first commentator James Scantlebury’s comment “I wish Byford the very best of luck, he’s gonna need it!”
@ LBM – I’m not surprised to see that article. As I’ve said before the political and governance structures in New York are appalling. They’re designed to generate conflict and that’s before you get to the inevitable grandstanding by politicians. I understand a politician’s reluctance to endorse long term subway blockades for fear of being blamed for any resultant problems. However you do not fix the scale of damage and asset decay on parts of the New York subway by faffing around in the evening and weekends. Sometimes you just have to accept the pain and give the professionals the time, money and access they need to do the right job. The counterbalance to that is that the professionals have to be able to deliver the work scope to time and budget to ensure the public get their service back when promised. Given the issues around subway construction / repair productivity and cost efficiency that’s a considerable issue for A Byford to deal with. Given the notorious alleged scale of corruption in NYC construction and with the trade unions that’s an enormous battle for Mr B.
If the governor won’t give Mr Byford the room and money he needs then I do expect he will go of his own volition. He doesn’t have to stay and be repeatedly undermined and then be forced to accept methodologies and technology he doesn’t trust. I certainly wouldn’t stay to be forced to deal with what I expect will be a disaster on the L line restoration because of the governor’s imposed plan. The governor has to have responsibility for that hung round his neck. Mr Byford could find employment anywhere he wanted so he has no need to stay if he is not going to be supported. And therein lies the dilemma for New York’s egotistical politicians. Do they want delivery or do they want photoshoots and front page coverage?
Andy Byford has resigned again from the New York MTA, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/nyregion/andy-byford-resigns-mta.html#click=https://t.co/TavhsD3wVu“>for real this time.
“Andy Byford, who was brought in to help revive New York City’s ailing subway, resigned as its leader on Thursday, ending a tumultuous two-year tenure marked by repeated clashes with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
“Mr. Byford had been widely praised by riders and transportation advocates for reversing the steep decline of the nation’s largest subway, and his departure raises significant questions about the future of an antiquated system struggling to become a 21st century transportation network…
“His departure could jeopardize the current campaign to fix the subway. He had ambitious plans to transform the system and his dogged work ethic made New Yorkers rally around him.”
Also noted in the IRJ, which suggests he’d had enough of an interfering mayor. (Where’ve we heard that before?)
https://www.railjournal.com/regions/north-america/byford-resigns-as-new-york-city-transit-president/
Alison
IIRC … it’s worse than that.
NYC’s Mayor & NYS’s Governor are at daggers drawn anyway, & transport especially across the city’s boundary into the rest of the state is a source of “contention”.
Poor old Mr Byford is the meat in the sandwich – I’m suprised he lasted this long.
But then, he’s a professional.
Alison, the mayor of New York City doesn’t appear to get a mention in the IRJ item – but the governor of New York State certainly does, and the MTA is a state organisation rather than a city one. The Subway is entirely (I think) in NYC, but it’s just one of the MTA’s four railroads.
So TfL will be looking for a new Commissioner to start from May when Mike Brown leaves…
Andy Byford provides more information about why he left the New York MTA in a televised interview with CBSN-NY.
Talk about turning full circle.
Byford’s been appointed TfL commissioner. Given he’s come from one political mess, good luck to him in managing a post-COVID TfL!
A < href="https://www.transitunplugged.com/andy-byford-2?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkdWa09UY3pNekZoTURVMiIsInQiOiJ2VXRUdW1ZQ0ozN1wvejA0MWhxMHJCVmhVVmlHdWJLRE8yM0ozd0hKZERlc2NEdGtrSnJtXC9YUGNSblwvS2hMeU9XRFJoWkF6WE5xd3A0NldpSEttZDNPcFEyZzdKN2xrdnA3eCs0SVZBczh3elVQbUZ0VW5ZMTJsSjkwaDcxQUVnSCJ9">podcast interview with Andy Byford now that he’s back in the UK and heading TfL, in which he addresses returning to London, a bit on his New York MTA experience, and his priority on public service and customer focus.
Corrected link
https://www.transitunplugged.com/andy-byford-2?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkdWa09UY3pNekZoTURVMiIsInQiOiJ2VXRUdW1ZQ0ozN1wvejA0MWhxMHJCVmhVVmlHdWJLRE8yM0ozd0hKZERlc2NEdGtrSnJtXC9YUGNSblwvS2hMeU9XRFJoWkF6WE5xd3A0NldpSEttZDNPcFEyZzdKN2xrdnA3eCs0SVZBczh3elVQbUZ0VW5ZMTJsSjkwaDcxQUVnSCJ9
Crossrail’s final board meeting took place on Thursday (17 September) with new governance arrangements to be outlined “in due course”. Mark Wild will now report directly to Andy Byford. “Several members” of the previous board would stay on at the project, but it is not yet announced who they are or how many would continue.
Byford “We have to learn from [Crossrail’s issues], or we won’t be in a very credible position to call for funding for big projects going forward. With project overruns you lose the confidence of the general public who don’t trust big organisations to be able to deliver, my current focus is to get on with the job in hand […] we’ll deal with the postmortem later”.
Finally seeing what some of us have been asking for..
No more redaction of 2 month old secret meetings.
Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild will report to Mr Byford and progress on Crossrail will be overseen by a TfL Crossrail sub-committee chaired by Heidi Alexander, the deputy mayor for transport. It will meet in public every eight weeks.
The Crossrail board has been scrapped and chairman Tony Meggs and board members such as former Labour minister Nick Raynsford have stood down. Previously Crossrail was run as an arms-length organisation jointly funded by TfL and the Department for Transport, and met in secret.
TfL finance committee papers this week revealed that the need for an additional £1.1 billion was becoming an “increasingly critical issue” as Crossrail is about to run out of funds.
Meggs and Raynsford’s earlier statements to the Parliamentary Committee did have a resignatory tone.
Andy Byford has also set a time for the retirement of the 40 year old 315s (May 2021) in time for the next hot spell – no reason has been published for the delayed replacement. Heidi Alexander and the GLA had been pressing the matter.
On London looks at a possible repeat of circumstances in his career, this time in London:
“The Transport for London chief left the equivalent role in New York because politicians made his job impossible. Sound familiar?
“Thinking about what London and New York’s transport systems might learn from each other after my recent trip across the pond, one similarity immediately stood out – both networks, London now, and New York between 2018 and early 2020, had Andy Byford in common.
“Affectionately known in New York as “train daddy”, veteran transit chief Byford was credited with major service improvements and the launch of a $51 billion investment programme to upgrade and modernise the ailing subway system.
“But his tenure came to a sudden end – he resigned after just two years in the job, citing “intolerable” political interference by New York state governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It got to a point where it was obvious I was not going to be allowed to get on with what needed to be done,” he said. “I had to make to my mind up, as a person with very strong principles, can I accept … a situation where I’m in a safety-critical role and the people are being given direction on operational matters behind my back. I needed to be left to run the system.”
“Byford sounded happier in an interview a few months into his new job at TfL. “I am very much enjoying also the benefits of a professional board,” he said. “I have dealt with a number of political boards in my time and this is a board that is populated by extremely impressive professionals.”…
There is a discussion here about the merits of possible policy changes but as yet nothing on the nationalisation of London Transport and the harmonisation of bus policy and fare levels as part of levelling up.
Andy Byford in video interview on what the MTA can learn from London’s Underground. Plus some positive aspects he believes that the NYC Subway has to offer.
Train Daddy Andy Byford will join Amtrak as Executive Vice President, and will oversee the development of high-speed rail.