Can we start an Andy Byford for mayor movement?
BY SUE-ANN LEVY,TORONTO SUN
TORONTO - He became CEO 14 months ago knowing full well a “more business-like approach” was needed to reinvent the TTC — and he set about doing so with much focus and little drama.
As I listened to Andy Byford speak to the Empire Club Monday about how in one year he has gone about replacing the “siege mentality” with a “can-do” culture at the TTC, I couldn’t help but think how the past two years have been a missed opportunity for the Rob Ford regime.
Byford talked about how he first delivered “quick wins” like all-day litter pickup on subway trains and the ability to purchase Metropasses at every station using debit and credit cards.
He told the crowd of about 200 he has spent the past year taking the TTC out of the Management Dark Ages by challenging mediocrity and obsessing about detail.
The TTC now has a vision statement, regular meetings that hold senior executives to account and performance indicators.
I suspect Ford rarely holds meetings with senior bureaucrats and wouldn’t know a performance indicator if it hit him in the head.
Byford has made it clear to the TTC union that “decades of old practices need to be swept away.” He’s started with the contracting out of the cleaning and servicing of buses at two garages.
But it won’t end there. Byford referred to the end of the collector job when Presto comes in and getting rid of guards on subways with the new trains, which are designed to be operated by one person.
Unlike Byford, Ford came hurling out of the gate with a plan to contract out garbage in District 2 and to remove the “jobs for life” provisions in the CUPE contracts.
Once that was done, he lost his way. There is so much more he could be doing, for example, with the parks bureaucracy. Customer service is nowhere near what it should be at City Hall.
Byford has now put together a corporate plan of what the TTC needs to achieve from now until 2017 to restore the TTC to that “jewel in the crown” of North American transit.
“We now have a plan to guide our transformation,” he told the crowd.
Ford has had no plan for two years — full stop.
Byford made no bones about the fact that the TTC needs sustained funding and “strong political leadership” — that is, long-term thinking from his political masters — to add capacity in the system to try to catch up to the rapid development in Toronto.
“It’s the most political place I’ve ever worked ... it’s certainly a challenge,” he told reporters after his speech. “Here, I’m dealing with 45 different opinions.”
He acknowledged that his TTC boss, Chairman Karen Stintz, leaves him to run the show, which is a good thing. I would say that’s probably because he makes her look good.
After all, this is the same Stintz who fought to the bitter end not to axe former chief general manager Gary Webster.
This is also the same Stintz, who told anyone who would listen in recent weeks that revenue tools were needed to fund transit and the mayor wasn’t showing leadership by refusing to have a council debate.
But when push came to shove last week at council, the TTC chairman didn’t have the courage, guts, leadership — call it what you want — to support any revenue tools.
Flanked by her entourage (her lovesick lapdog John Parker and her henchman J.P. Boutros) at the Empire Club Monday, she claimed she, along with council, “proceeded with a list of exclusions” consistent with what “other councils were saying around the province.”
(Let’s give her a gold medal for excellence in political spin!)
But getting back to Byford, he said he will not be “fazed” by the lack of political leadership and intends to “keep banging that drum for sustained funding.”
Ford, on the other hand, has allowed others to set the agenda — content to push the issues he should be handling now off to the next election.
Could we start a Byford for Mayor movement?
