LEVY: Bye Bye, Byford...the bright lights of Broadway are calling

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With just days to go until his departure, Andy Byford apologizes for the chaotic state of his office.

When I met him at TTC headquarters this past Tuesday afternoon for his official exit interview with the Toronto Sun, he was in the midst of packing up his mementos, being stopped by people who wanted to take “selfies” with him, briefing his senior staff on outstanding issues and hoping to check off the all entries on his giant “To do” list hung on the wall across from his desk.

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Needless to say, the A-type puts his all into the job, so much so that he admits his wife, Allison, is concerned she won’t see him much once he starts work as president and CEO of New York City Transit Authority on Jan. 16, where he will oversee 24 subway lines, 7,000 buses and para-trans (the NYC version of Wheel Trans).

“She’s already told me in no uncertain terms I’m not wearing a name badge in New York,” he said, noting he wants to live in midtown Manhattan so he can ride transit to work as he did here in Toronto (the couple does not own a car).

While his new role will be “daunting,” the native Brit feels he’s been well-trained for the NYC job  because he’s dealt with so many political issues here and the media scrutiny on him has been “pretty intense.”

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He soon realized after he  took over the top job in the spring of 2012 — following the sudden ouster of his predecessor Gary Webster — that the landscape was far more “intense” politically than what he’d ever dealt with in his previous roles with the London Underground and Rail Corp. in Sydney, Australia. 

He also learned to have a “really thick skin” and not read “the (media) comments or Twitter.”

It perhaps sounds clichéd, but the five and a-half years since I first met Byford over a sushi lunch — he in a blue suit to tease me because I had regularly called the TTC brass, “Blue Suits” — have flown by. He made it clear back then he wanted to modernize a male-dominated organization stuck in the 1970s and tackle customer service — with a five-year corporate plan — and he’s kept his promise.

Last week, this time dressed in a charcoal suit, Byford said he believes the legacy he leaves behind is “culture change” and the introduction of a “customer-led ethos.”

Overall customer satisfaction has increased from 72% to 80% in the past five years, he says, and customer service is so important that charts are even posted in the head office elevators.

He’s proud to say his 12-member executive team has gone from being completely male to comprised of six men and six women.

Byford says he’s also changed the management style which was “very Neanderthal, top-down, male-dominated, hierarchical” (I would add secretive and less than accountable) and has focused on recruiting people from “really good customer service backgrounds.”

“There’s a way more positive engaged enlightened workforce,” he says, noting that any successor who lets the culture slide back “would be foolish.”

His legacy aside, Byford says by far the “proudest hour of his career ” was when the $3.2-billion, 8.6-km Toronto-York-Spadina subway extension (TYSSE) opened a week ago.

He said it’s not just that this state-of-the-art subway — equipped with the first Automatic Train Control of its kind in Canada, as well Wi-Fi and cell-equipped — “perfectly book-ended” his six years in total at the TTC.

But he’s even prouder that like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he came up with a plan to resurrect the project he inherited when it was in serious trouble in 2015, and likely not to be done until early 2019 (four years behind schedule). 

After seven hours of questioning, he convinced the mayor, council and TTC commissioners to bring in private contractor, Bechtel, to finish it by the end of 2017 for an extra $400-million (which included Bechtel’s fees and the outstanding contractor claims.)

Which brings us back to Byford’s “To do” list. 

He told me he’s been spending his last three weeks on the job doing his “damndest” to get the claims closed.

As of last Tuesday, he’d closed three of six claims and was well within getting the others settled without going over the $400-million budget.

“I’m working right to the end,” he said. “It’s very bittersweet to leave the TTC…I’m feeling increasingly poignant.”

ANDY’S FINAL THOUGHTS —

• – On Mayor John Tory:

“Decent, he’s supportive of me, he’s been supportive of transit.”

• – On TTC chairman Josh Colle:

“A friend. I think we’ve come to have a very good working relationship and we got a lot done together.”

• On former ATU local 113 president Bob Kinnear:

” A tough adversary who I always respected for never having forgotten his roots. Even though we had a difficult relationship at times, we got a lot done.”

• – ATU local 113:

“Challenging and on occasions, frustrating. We really want to work with them. So often they won’t engage with us.”

• King St. pilot

“The key thing is that it’s a pilot and it gets evaluated … we shouldn’t wait a year and watch business go out of business …I would advocate making regular tweaks as necessary.”

• Scarborough’s one-stop subway

“The key next step that is much misunderstood is that the TTC is to take the design to 30%…you then cost that …so council could revert at that point if it’s going to go above the $3.56-billion.”

• – Toronto:

“A happy place. I’ve enjoyed living here. I will miss the TTC, particularly.”

• – Working in the Land of Trump:

“I’m really forward to living in the U.S. It will be really interesting to see if the media hype matches the reality of what’s going on.”

slevy@postmedia.com