Byford lets loose

I quit because of Cuomo: ex-transit boss

A micromanaging boss who goes behind your back and doesn't include you in important decisions — who needs it?

Not Andy Byford, who said in an interview with CBSN New Yorkthat he quit as president of NYC Transit because “forces” in Albany — particularly, Gov. Cuomo — made his job unbearable.

“Towards the end of my tenure, I felt that the job had become somewhat intolerable,” Byford told WCBS-TV political reporter Marcia Kramer in the interview aired Friday night.

“I felt very frustrated that I was being excluded and marginalized from key discussions and decisions around running the subway,” Byford said later in the interview.

Cuomo's response: Who, me?

“I didn't work with Andy Byford,” the governor said after word of the interview got around Friday afternoon.

“I worked with Pat Foye,” said Cuomo — referring to the MTA's chairman and CEO.

“I worked with his higherups,” Cuomo (inset) added. He said Byford was probably upset “because I dealt with his bosses.”

That's not how Byford explained it in his TV interview.

“There were situations where people who worked for me, and even people who worked for people who worked for me — so two levels down — were being summoned to be given directions about how the subway or the bus system – mainly the subway – should be run,” he said.

The directions, Byford said, were handed out at the governor's office.

“I needed to be left to run the system,” Byford said. “I found myself being undermined, if I'm honest.”

“Were you being undermined by the governor?” Kramer asked.

“To a large extent,” Byford said.

“I would not accept the fact my people were being yelled at, they were being given direction and I was excluded from those meetings,” g Byford y told Kramer.

Byford griped that Cuomo excluded him from high-level meetings with other MTA executives. He said that Cuomo once excluded NYC Transit officials from a meeting where he gave top MTA executives “specific direction” about fixes to the subway signal system.

He wasn't sure if Cuomo was envious of the attention he got as he traveled around the city promoting his bus and subway improvement plans.

“I didn't seek the moniker ‘Train Daddy,' ” Byford said. “I didn't seek publicity. But a good transit professional gets out and about. You can't run a transit system from a desk [at MTA headquarters] at 2 Broadway.”

Byford — a career transit professional who 30 years ago was a station supervisor on London's Underground — was hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in November 2017. He was originally tasked with overseeing the day-to-day operations of NYC Transit's subway and buses, as well as plans to modernize the subway's ancient signal system.

During Byford's tenure, Cuomo and MTA leaders backed outside consultants' reorganization plans to limit his job to day-to-day operations, and give the work of modernizing the subway system to other parts of the agency.

“The job I came to do — I'm not going to say it was cut in half,” Byford said. “It was a microcosm of what it once was.”

Byford resigned in January. His last day on the job was Feb. 21.