WATCH: TTC CEO Andy Byford is confident that Mayor Tory’s SmartTrack plan will be successful. Dave Trafford reports.
If your rush hour commute on the TTC feels increasingly crowded, well, that’s because ridership is growing at a record rate.
There were more than 533 million rides this year. That’s nearly fifteen times the population of Canada. It’s a stat that the CEO of the TTC all at once celebrates and laments.
Andy Byford says the growth in ridership is one of the transit service’s greatest challenges. It’s part of what he calls the “triple whammy” curse on Toronto’s public transit.
An aging infrastructure, a lack of proportional funding from governments, and spiking ridership all combine to stagger the system in its tracks.
WATCH: Andy Byford talks about the “triple whammy” of problems facing the TTC.
But Byford is a self-proclaimed optimist. In a wide-ranging year-end interview, he said he’s confident that Toronto’s transit system will return to its glory days within the next seven years. It’s Byford’s goal to make Torontonians proud of the TTC again.
While politicians and media are focused on the efficacy of Mayor Tory’s SmartTrack initiatives, Byford has taken something akin to the “broken window” approach to service delivery at the TTC.
He wants your ride on the TTC to be “forgettable”, as in you accessed the system easily, your ride arrived on schedule and you got where you needed to go without incident. Byford credits the legions of TTC workers with making that happen hundreds of thousands of times a day.
“A lot goes into making a forgettable journey. We’ve got people working 24/7 all across the commission, in-car houses, in the front line positions that customers see. But behind the scenes, we’ve got 13 thousand people whose mandate and raison d’etre is to move Toronto,” he said.
WATCH: Andy Byford talks about whether the transit demands of Toronto have outgrown the TTC’s ability to manage them.
Add that to the challenges of building the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line, expanding the Spadina subway line, introducing the Presto card, rolling out new streetcars and Byford’s already got a full plate.
Then there is SmartTrack.
The big idea that John Tory rode into the Mayor’s office; an idea that has all the right people, (i.e., Premier Wynne and Prime Minister Harper), nodding in the affirmative; an idea the voters embraced even if the funding model was still a bit sketchy; an idea that Metrolinx hasn’t dismissed (which, given its history, amounts to a relatively resounding endorsement).
It is, however, an idea that wasn’t born at the TTC. But now it’s expected that Andy Byford will turn this idea into an initiative and, ultimately, into a seamless integration of key TTC and GO lines in Toronto.
And it’s got to be completely up and running by 2022. Byford doesn’t miss a beat when he says it can be done.“The Mayor’s certainly very determined and our job is to enable that. So I think it’s a very good idea.”
Byford particularly likes the idea of finally making better use of the GO tracks that wind through Toronto.
“I think the really smart bit about SmartTrack is that it’s an overlay onto what GO were going to do any way but the really smart bit, the selling point is that you in fill with local stations to effectively create a stopping service which will, at a stroke, take some of the pressure off the east-west Line 2 for the TTC and mean that people can get downtown much quicker by following an alternate route.”
WATCH: Andy Byford talks about SmartTrack and the growth of the TTC.
He’s quick to point out that this doesn’t mean we don’t need or won’t have a Downtown Relief Line.
“I think, arguably, it puts off the need for a relief line but we won’t know that until we’ve modeled the affect,” he said.
Byford admits there will be “ups and downs along the way” as the TTC pushes forwarded in what he calls this “new era for public transit,” but he’s convinced his crystal ball view of the next seven years is not only doable – it will be done.
“Within that 7 years SmartTrack will be up and running. Within that 7 years all of our new streetcars will be rolled out. Within that 7 years the Spadina extension will have been operating for quite some time. We’ll have had renewed bus fleet in large order. We’ll have added service. The culture change will have really take effect so that customers feel valued. So I’m very confident for the future. I think it will look fundamentally different.”
If all goes as Byford and Tory plan, the TTC and Toronto may well be celebrating a twenty first century version of the “roaring 20s.”
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