Updated September 6, 2024 at 4:00 pm:

The TTC has announced that Greg Percy has been appointed interim CEO effective September 9.

Percy had a 15 year career including the President of GO Transit and Chief Operating Officer of Metrolinx, and since 2019 has been Executive Vice President of CAD Railway.

At a meeting on Friday, September 6, 2024, the TTC Board is expected to appoint an Interim CEO replacing the just-departed Rick Leary for a period of at least six months. Their special meeting will occur online starting at 2pm, but discussion of the appointment will occur in private session with results to be announced following the approval.

This process took longer than originally expected back on June 20 when Leary announced his resignation. Moreover, there have been conflicting reports of whether an Interim CEO could also compete for the permanent role through a search process now underway. An established transit professional is unlikely to uproot his or her career for a short term assignment.

The role brings many challenges, but chief among them will be to right “the good ship TTC” not just from the cumulative effects of the pandemic, but of the Leary years’ damage to organizational culture. It is no secret that he stripped the TTC of many from the leadership team built by former CEO Andy Byford, and that his management style brooked no opposition.

The TTC Board was complicit through their inaction, notably after the scandal of the “near miss” incident near Osgoode Station, and only finally launched an investigation into Leary’s performance in Fall 2023 after a failed attempt to oust him by Chair Jamaal Myers.

Some Board members regard their job as setting overall direction and policy, and leaving running the organization to management. That sentiment is fine in theory, but it assumes that the Board is well informed, ensures that mechanisms to monitor the system’s health are in place, and establishes policy, not just as a rubber stamp. In this they have failed, and even the reconstituted Board in Mayor Chow’s term has not fully addressed several issues, notably service quality and the future operating budget.

If an Interim CEO does little more than keep the lights on and the CEO’s chair warm for an eventual replacement, the TTC will lose vital time when inaction really is not an option. Key issues face the TTC today.

The State of Disrepair

We know from several reports and incidents that maintenance levels have fallen on the TTC. Some of these are obvious from what riders see and experience, others only surface in an emergency. They include:

• The state of subway track inspection and repair, including the many Restricted Speed Zones that seem to appear faster than the TTC can repair them.
• The question of work car fleet adequacy and availability, and of staffing levels capable of supporting the needed inspection and maintenance work.
• The condition of the subway, streetcar and bus fleet, and the degree to which unreliable vehicles hamper service growth.

Staffing Levels

There has been some staff and contractor growth, but this has not necessarily gone to front line provision of service. Security and fare inspection, supervisory personnel and public information guides add to the headcount, but not to the pool of bus operators and maintainers.

Although the TTC speaks of adding service, we do not know what the capacity of the system might be if only all of the fleet were actually on the road. The spare ratio for all three fleets is well above the 20% level considered an industry norm (1 spare vehicle or train for every 5 in scheduled service), but more are not operated because of headcount constraints in the budget.

A further problem lies in scheduling with trip times extended not just to deal with rising demand and congestion, but also to add terminal recovery time in an attempt to avoid short turns and ensure even departures. This adds to vehicle and operator hours, but not to service levels. In some cases, the schedule changes actually reduce service as seen by riders in the notional goal of “reliability”.

Service Levels and Crowding

The TTC reports service recovery relative to pre-pandemic conditions on the basis of vehicle hours, not on the actual frequency of service experienced by riders. This puts the best possible face on “recovery”, but does not compare actual scheduled service (headways or, conversely, buses/hour) to pre-pandemic times. Moreover, the comparison is done system-wide without route-by-route or time-of-day breakdowns.

Service reliability, the very thing Byford hired Leary to fix, based on his alleged success at York Region Transit, continues to be poor even by TTC standards. This is compounded by reporting with metrics that look only at select locations and at overall averages, not the behaviour of individual routes.

Crowding on TTC vehicles is rarely reported. Although the TTC claims to monitor problems, any fixes are always subject to budget headroom. For two years now, the budget included a provision for opening of new Lines 5 Crosstown and 6 Finch, but the money reserved for them has not been required. This gave management some wiggle-room to add service late in the year. (Note that these provisions were made before Ontario agreed to pay the operating cost of the two lines.)

Crowding is a symptom of two issues. First is the simple adequacy and reliability of service relative to demand, but the second is the foregone capability of attracting more riders. This was a big issue before 2020 when TTC ridership stopped growing, and one suspected reason was the lack of spare, attractive capacity on vehicles.

As a matter of service policy and standards, the question is whether to run just enough service to handle most riders, most of the time, or to actively improve service relative to demand in the hopes of growth.

The Five Year Service Plan foresees only modest growth in demand and service with annual ridership still below 2019 levels in 2028. There is no “Plan B” discussing aggressive growth even though the City’s avowed policy is to shift more riders to transit.

Even worse, there is no “Plan C” showing how much service would have to be cut to achieve budget reductions. A considerable part of total operating costs is the fixed overhead not just of management, but of infrastructure and maintenance that is required whether trains, buses and streetcars run or not. This is particularly true for the subway network.

Cutting, say, 10% of total operating costs will produce a considerably larger cut in service, the variable portion of the budget. Conversely, adding 10% will produce a greater effect on service because the fixed portion of the budget is already covered.

A Question of Capability and Transparency

A fundamental problem for a new CEO will be to assess the TTC’s actual ability to operate and maintain transit service and infrastructure. For some years, the focus has been on acquiring funding for a handful of megaprojects, most recently the planned Line 2 train replacement order. This is still not a settled deal, and the dubious future of the Liberal government raises the possibility that Toronto will never see the hoped-for Federal money.

Much more fundamentally, the day-to-day operation of the TTC was hamstrung both by lost fare revenue and limits on operating subsidies, a growing problem as special covid-era funding expired. Toronto managed to fund the TTC, but annual budgets included “efficiencies” that, in retrospect, have compromised system integrity. There has never been a public debate about these trade-offs, let alone a detailed accounting.

The Board is happy to leave budget “debates” to a year-end scramble when all major decisions are locked in place. There is no TTC Budget Committee, and even the Risk Management Committee does not discuss the effect of budgets on system condition. The SRT derailment and the general problems with subway track were a wake-up call, but the Board is still asleep at the switch.

Several metrics in the CEO’s Report mask the system conditions:

• Vehicle availability is listed relative to scheduled service, not as a percentage of the actual fleet.
• Reported vehicle reliability values (mean distance before failure) are capped without showing the actual values for various sub-fleets. This masks differences between vehicle types and groups.
• Service reliability is reported only for route end points, and then with a metric that allows bunching from terminals, let alone further along routes.
• There is no report of vehicles that failed before, or shortly after, leaving the garage.
• There is no report of trips cancelled due to lack of operators or vehicles.
• There is no report of bunched or overcrowded trips.
• Most values are averaged over routes and over time hiding the level of variation.

This is not an exhaustive list. The basic problem is that the metrics do not present a riders’ eye view of service, and they hide information about vehicle reliability. The Board pats everyone on the back for a job well done, but against a low bar. Changing the reported information and educating the Board will involve some culture shock to adjust to new, less complimentary, numbers.

There is no question that the TTC and the City face severe budget pressure on both the operating and capital fronts. What do we as a city want our transit system to be? How much are we willing to pay for it? What trade-offs would we make?

The TTC must also look inward to its own culture and recent history. There is a long-standing tendency to blame all problems on external forces including politics, funding, traffic congestion and those pesky passengers.

Revitalizing staff and restoring system pride are essential to get the most out of the workers and the infrastructure. This cannot wait six months or more for a permanent CEO. At the very least, the Interim CEO must flag problems for the Board and set the stage for real renewal. This must not include the artificial preservation of Rick Leary’s legacy. An eyes-open approach is essential to keep whatever might be worthwhile, but be prepared to amend and trim what is not.