At today’s special meeting of the TTC Board, the expectation was that Rick Leary would be dismissed as CEO. This was not to be, for reasons yet, if ever, to be revealed.
Problems with Leary’s performance go back some years, and he is Andy Byford’s worst legacy. His original hiring was intended to bring a focus to operations as Byford’s deputy based on a supposed reputation from his stint at York Region improving operations there. Needless to say, there is a huge difference between a sprawling bus network with mostly infrequent service (YRT has fewer than 600 buses) and the TTC’s bus, streetcar and subway operations.
Leary came to YRT following his retirement under a cloud from Boston’s transit agency, the MBTA, quite a step down in the scale of systems. In Boston, a serious collision on the Green Line (the streetcar subway which has been a major part of the City’s transit system for over a century) led to a Nation Transportation Safety Board condemnation of the safety culture at the transit agency (then the MBTA). Leary was supposed to address the report at an MBTA Board meeting, but never showed up, and retired shortly afterward.
When Byford left TTC to become President of the New York City Transit Authority (one component of the larger Metropolitan Transportation Authority), Leary succeeded to the CEO’s role. There were warning signs of problems from early days with the abrupt departure of many of Byford’s TTC management team, and stories of a hostile work environment. Some were pushed out, some waited until their pension numbers were favourable.
Leary was known to have a quick temper, and stories of a poisonous work environment were common. TTC Board meetings became tightly scripted sessions with rehearsed presentations and responses to likely questions. Leary fit in well with the Tory era which, we now know, had a strong desire for news that “everything is all right” and the minimization of problems, especially fiscal ones.
Labour-management relations left a lot to be desired, although Leary’s moves to outsource some aspects of system maintenance responded both to the hawkish stance of some Board members, and carried over a program started under Byford.
Previous articles here have flagged the shortcomings of the CEO’s Report with metrics that hide more than they tell. Service quality is reduced to “on time performance” with the naive sense that vehicles leaving on time from terminals will magically provide even service across their routes. That, in turn, led to a scheduling regime that favoured padded travel times, and a “no short turns” operating policy that did as much harm as the problem it was intended to fix. More subtly, what was lost was the need to actively manage service, including the necessary skilled staffing, to deal with constantly changing conditions.
Another troubling problem is the size of the transit fleet unmatched by service. This problem existed before the covid-era service cuts, but worsened as service was reduced. Many elderly and/or less reliable vehicles could be sidelined without affecting service. However, as new buses are delivered, the excuse of an old fleet will not hold up, and the fleet should be out on the street, not sitting in garages and carhouses.
This has staffing and budget implications that have not been part of TTC’s planning. The question is not just can we run more service, but how much and how soon. Leary’s history on that point is dubious. After John Tory’s election as Mayor in 2014, he acknowledged that the system had been starved for resources under the Ford administration, a position for which then-candidate Olivia Chow was ridiculed during the campaign. Tory bought the TTC an extra 100 buses, but almost all of them went into the spare pool, not into regular service.
The degree of collusion between TTC management and John Tory’s office was on full show during the 2023 budget debates when the TTC, that is to say Leary, refused to release details of service changes even when they were requested by Councillors and Board members. Keeping secrets won’t hide the information, only delay the public’s seeing what happens with service on the street.
At the end of Byford’s era at TTC, there was a plan for Line 2 renewal including a replacement fleet, new carhouse and yard, automatic train control, power and station upgrades. This plan never saw the light of day, and Leary instead pushed a scheme to rebuild the existing Line 2 fleet. This would avoid a capital spending crunch, but would also limit service growth, including on the Scarborough extension, and expose the TTC to a potentially unreliable aging fleet of subway cars. In time Leary reversed his position, but key years and momentum were lost.
Most troubling has been the matter of safety. In June 2020, there was a “near miss” at Osgoode Station where a train leaving the pocket track nearly collided with a northbound train on the main line. The issue here is not the signal design, training and operational procedures that made this possible, but that Leary withheld any report of the incident from the TTC Board almost a year after the incident. This should have been a firing offense, but Leary remained in his position with an explicit Board directive that major incidents of this nature be reported immediately.
The SRT derailment that abruptly ended service on that route in July 2023 was very public. The full investigative report into its causes has still not been released although an overview was presented at September’s Board meeting. At this point it is not clear whether deferred maintenance was the culprit, but there are unhappy echoes here of another period of TTC financial constraint and maintenance cuts that led to the crash at Russell Hill.
Again the issue is whether a growing problem was not reported, or worse not even detected. This scenario has been seen on other transit systems where operations degrade through make-shift arrangements like slow orders over poor track while the repair backlog grows. We simply do not know the current state of the TTC, and the political focus has been entirely on maintaining service.
Those who follow TTC announcements of delays will recognize the frequently-used term “operational problems”. This can embrace a wide variety of issues ranging from operators who do not show up for their shift to disabled vehicles, derailments or power system failures. Over Leary’s tenure, the amount of information giving specific explanations for problems has declined sharply, and Leary himself is rarely seen as a spokesman and explainer for the TTC. This is much unlike Andy Byford who could articulate problems and more importantly a desire to fix whatever underlying problems might exist.
If Leary had been removed, the challenge faced by a new CEO would lie in rebuilding the management structure, gaining the trust and dedication of 15,000 employees, presenting a credible and thorough recovery plan and budget for Toronto’s transit system, all while keeping the lights on and the wheels turning. Leary is not the man for that job.
No, gentle reader, I am not going to write yet another article about what the TTC should be doing. We’ve been around that bush a few times recently. The context yet to be set is the amount of money the TTC will have both for day-to-day service and maintenance, as well as capital funding for key projects.
Toronto’s political preoccupation, with good reason, is on the housing and affordability crisis. Transit will not be front of the line for funding, although it is a key service. Into this uncertain future should come a new CEO and revived management.
This is a significant failure for Mayor Chow. A too-timid TTC Board has missed the chance for renewal of its senior management.
Steve Munro 