1 Comment December 9, 2012 at 11:29 pm

2012 Hero: Andy Byford

Nominated for: bringing customer-focused change to the TTC.

By Casey Irvin • Illustration by Jeremy Kai

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Andy Byford entered Toronto’s public spotlight in early 2012 as the freshly minted interim chief general manager for the TTC. Byford took on the role after the man who hired him into the organization, Gary Webster, was fired from the position without cause (but actually because he wouldn’t fall in line with Rob Ford’s subway-or-no-way mantra). His appointment was quickly made permanent and Byford changed his title to CEO.

Since taking the reins, Byford has pushed hard for the TTC to value the people who ride it. Not everyone will agree that the fight for improved customer service is a terribly lionhearted one to take on, but at a public organization faced with two conflicting needs—controlling its budget while serving an ever-increasing numbers of riders—a lesser person could probably find countless reasons to let this stuff slide.

Over the course of 2012, Byford has announced a series of ideas and projects that should make the better way, um, way better. Of them, the customer charter is perhaps the biggest. The commission that Byford is helping reshape will use this charter to give riders a clearer idea of the quality of service that they can expect. He’s essentially giving riders a reason to raise their expectations.

For a while the TTC had been contending with some unfortunate incidents—a sleeping fare collector, a distracted subway driver—which shook the public’s already faltering confidence in the system. Byford has tackled this head-on: soon after becoming CEO he issued a public memo to all TTC staff, warning that those who showed such disregard for transit riders would face real consequences. Faith in Byford’s leadership increased again in June, when he went to the scene of a Union Station flood, and provided frequent updates while supervising the clean-up.

And though it seems like a minor detail, Byford also deserves praise for his stance on TTC fashion—the uniforms will be changing in 2014. He’s sweating the small stuff too, and he wants us all, riders and staff alike, to feel better about the transit system that forms the backbone of Toronto.

Byford’s leadership is refreshing. It is also a marked contrast to the past couple of years of transit discussions at City Hall, which have consisted of little more than gridlocked ideological squabbling. More substantial improvements might still be a ways down the tracks, but better customer service is something that anyone should be able to get behind. Andy Byford certainly has, and he’s won many Torontonians over in the process.

See the other nominees in the Cityscape category: