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TTC’s New Board

Today, Toronto Council appointed a new slate of members to the six Council positions on the TTC’s Board of Commissioners. They are:

  • Jamaal Myers, Chair
  • Josh Matlow
  • Paul Ainslie (*)
  • Dianne Saxe
  • Chris Moise (*)
  • Stephen Holyday (*)

(*) Members who were reappointed.

The new chair, Jamaal Myers, will be interesting to watch. He has a background in transit advocacy and was once part of the Scarborough Transit Action group. He has also been appointed as Chair of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee.

Having a regular transit rider from an activist background will be a big change for the TTC as it plans for pandemic recovery and improvement.

Josh Matlow has been a thorn in the side of the Scarborough Subway advocates, but he is is not a one-issue candidate. He will bring another important voice to the TTC Board for improvement across the network.

Dianne Saxe comes from an environmentalist background and was the last Environmental Commissioner of Ontario until the position was consolidated with the Auditor General by the Ford government.

The three new members, joining Commissioners Ainslie and Moise, strongly swing the balance on the TTC Board to a concern with transit as a service and with addressing rider needs. As I have written in detailed past articles, all of them must now wrap their heads around how the TTC works (or doesn’t work) and determine priorities for the TTC’s future.

As for TTC management, I have a word of advice: these people actually ride the system and know what day-to-day transit experience looks and feels like. Don’t try to con them with meaningless stats skewed to show the system in the best possible light. Where there are problems, shortfalls between expectation and delivery, tell people so that they can be addressed, and so that riders sense that management is living on the same planet.

17 thoughts on “TTC’s New Board”

  1. So are you hopeful for positive change? And do you thru i [???] that the current CEO should stay?

    Steve: Yes I am hopeful, and no, the CEO should not stay. He has done a lot of damage to staff morale, and a lot of the team Andy Byford built has resigned, retired or been fired. Recovery from this will not simply be a case of getting a new CEO.

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  2. Any insight into why Chow would leave Holyday on the TTC board?

    Steve: A token right winger. To be fair, Holyday is a fiscal conservative, but it will be interesting to se if he moves from this to looking at how to rebuild the TTC, not just opposing things because “we can’t afford it”.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. I heard Jamaal worked at TTC at one point too. So management should not waste their time BSing him.

    These new appointees have a more proven background, time will tell how well they do in their new positions.

    Not sure why Holyday is back, that’s a step back for for the Board. I looked forward to the next Board meeting which I believe is Sept 26.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Must say I never thought I would be defending Holyday but I think it is actually a good thing to have a (probably) opposing and contrarian voice on a committee so that the majority (of progressives in this case) do not simply hear their own voices. For better or worse, Holyday represents a fairly large proportion of the population who think governments try to do ‘too much’ and do not do things in an efficient and cost-effective way. I mostly disagree with the former and I think most people think there are efficiencies that could be made so that we can do more. These views SHOULD be expressed at the Board and it should not become an echo chamber.

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  6. Yes, I agree that it’s somewhat useful to have Mr. Holyday on the TTC, though if he’s an alleged fiscal conservative, there are plenty of transit boondougles around and the costs to taxpayers from automobility and impacts outweigh the transit subsidies. To the point that we likely should have a minimum $500 a vehicle VRTax, if our all-wise carservative premier and illk will permit it, which includes releasing information to the City to enable it to be done, and if Mr. Holyday ever does see cars as being subsidized, he can advocate for equity. And there are limits to Etobicoke’s access to the core/Toronto, as there are really only 3 clear routes at Lake/Queensway, Bloor, and Eglinton, and of course transit is the logical choice, or is for some.

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  7. Lets just say the Holyday family contributed little to get any transit to their constituents in Etobicoke. They contributed nothing to get the Kipling transit hub, UPX, nor the Finch West LRT started. Subways is all they believe in yet they want everyone else to pay for it. It’s why while Scarborough makes a ruckus for not getting a subway extension, Etobicoke is silent on their transit desert.

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  8. I hope the new Chair will demand all members MUST use TTC on a regular basis. It is the ONLY way they will have any empathy for riders.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. “I hope the new Chair will demand all members MUST use TTC on a regular basis. It is the ONLY way they will have any empathy for riders.”

    If there was ever a more obvious “be careful what you wish for” this is it, with the possible exception of “the province should fund the TTC” and then be able to add or remove that funding on the whim of voters from all over Ontario.

    Ignoring the “forcing” part being obviously impossible, and likely illegal, if it was required you would likely have only membership with pleasant TTC commutes, because if your regular TTC commute would be bad you would simply never sign up for it if and be forced to do it, so the board would be full of people riding the subway from Carlton to Queen and saying “wow that was quick and fine. The TTC is perfect. I don’t understand why people say service is bad.”

    Even worse, if there was something very wrong, it would invite demands only to focus on that. Imagine a board meeting that says “forget the rest of the city, my bus trip on Forest Hill was two minutes late today! I demand action! I demand the TTC divert resources to improve my personal commute from Heath street to St. Clair!.”

    The trope of “forcing” board members to ride the TTC invites more bias and solves nothing at all, and potentially it would cause many more problems.

    Steve: If you look at the history of the Premium Express Buses, almost all arose because they served a Board member’s ward when they were implemented.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. I’m glad Ernie added good perspective on Etobicoke transit and the Holyday record. With Steve’s comment on express buses, maybe we can revisit the non-logic (for me) of having a further fare/toll, assuming that’s still practiced. The logic of spending c. $1.45M plus on new riders in Scarborough for the subway extension doesn’t compare well to cost of new riders on express services, if fares were simpler/cheaper, right? But what’s logic got to do with it…?

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  11. Saxe has a strong environmental focus, but IME she comes at things from a legal point of view — her career before politics was in law.

    From a TTC persepctive, I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing. Or neutral.

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  12. Meh, just ask them to ride the TTC from home to TTC meetings.

    Holyday will actually get to blacken the doors of a bus, presumably down to one of the west-end stations on the Bloor Danforth, where he will enjoy the scenic tour of slow zones, all in the comfort of a plush T1 car.

    Ainslie can check out the operation of the red lanes as he makes his way to Kennedy station. While waiting for his lovely T1, he can listen to the pleasant music they play to dissuade young punks from hanging around (or do they still do that?).

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  13. Steve: To this point in time; are you pleasantly surprised at Olivia’s appointments in general?

    Steve: Yes. Now we get to see how well they work out, and to what extent her team seizes back control of important policy decisions from staff to whom Tory abdicated a lot of power.

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  14. Thank you for mentioning the fact that people who work at the TTC actually ride it. We know it’s broken and are trying to fix it but if customers don’t complain unfortunately the company doesn’t take it seriously. So please to everyone submit those complaints with examples. I was at “x” station waiting for “x” route the wait time was longer than the posted 10 minutes.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. With time, I’m remembering the burying of the Eglinton W LRT not being needed as much as the ‘carservative’ overlords felt it was, and that added about $2 billion extra to the overall cost, not that these billions matter in some areas and projects, right? And maybe Mr. Holyday is on record for it being a good thing to bury another couple of billion; but there’s been so much awry that it’s been hard to keep a focus – part of the ‘plan’ perhaps, sigh.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. “So please to everyone submit those complaints with examples. I was at “x” station waiting for “x” route the wait time was longer than the posted 10 minutes.”

    With the location and passenger load data the TTC has, they should know exactly how many customers where waiting exactly how much longer then they should have without the need for individuals to complain.

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  17. They know how many people were waiting, but with the screwed up metrics – 5 mins late is “on time” – Rick gets to paint a rosy picture. If the complaints start rolling in bunches, this gets mentioned in the report without too many ways to bury it and may force them to actually get off their collective rear ends and practice a long forgotten strategy – ROUTE MANAGEMENT.

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