TTC tackles issues head-on
New CEO Andy Byford lays out a performance scorecard for transit
In his first progress report on the TTC, CEO Andy Byford is not holding anything back.
The new report that will go to the TTC commission and city council on Friday offers a “scorecard” on how the TTC has performed in key areas such as punctuality, reliability, employee absenteeism and safe- ty during the last three months of 2011.
It is a marked difference from previous TTC reports in which performance results were “lost in the previously impenetrable management reports,” said Byford, who was appointed to the position of CEO earlier this month.
“Right off the bat, this report gives you information you can track, you can focus on, can incrementally stretch and improve our targets,” said Byford. “But the key thing is that it keeps us accountable for our performance,” he said. According to the report, the TTC has been “on target” for indicators such as subway punctuality, reliability, safety and security of both passengers and staff, and station cleanliness. Areas that are off-target include: availability of escalators, employee absences, and reliability of subway trains on the Yonge-university-Spadina Line. “I have put all of my managers on notice . . . that people have to start to come to work more regularly. I’m pretty hard-line on that,” Byford said. In addition to improving these indicators, Byford says he has plans to sharpen the targets themselves. “Some of the targets are not as tough as I would want them to be,” Byford said. “I expect to stretch them and make them tougher, but there is no point that every target should be 99 per cent if there is no chance in meeting them . . . so we want to start with what is achievable right now,” he said. Laying out things so clearly makes it easier to “take remedial action or make sure we meet our targets, or see if we are getting worse,” Byford said. “We are determined to be more transparent, accountable and modern as an organization, and this is a step along that road.”