Departing CEO Bruce McCuaig optimistic about future of Metrolinx
McCuaig says there will always be a need for a regional transit agency, and downplays controversies over Presto and the Union Pearson Express.

thestar.com
By BEN SPURR
April 3, 2017

For a man who has spent nearly seven years atop the fractious world of Toronto-area transit planning, Bruce McCuaig is remarkably unfazed by the criticism and controversy that accompany his line of work.

Metrolinx announced last week that McCuaig was stepping down as its president and CEO, unexpectedly calling time on the congenial 56-year-old’s six-and-a-half-year tenure in charge of the agency responsible for transit planning in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).

He was appointed to the job in 2010, and his time at Metrolinx hasn’t been without wrinkles. But in an interview on his third-floor office at the agency’s Union Station headquarters, it was clear that McCuaig sees those problems as mere detours on the route to better transit for the GTHA.

“When I look back on the past six years, I think of it as a period of progress. A lot of foundations being laid for the kind of service that we need in this region,” he said.

Accomplishments McCuaig cites include completing tunnelling work for the $5.3-billionEglinton Crosstown LRT, implementing Presto on the TTC, launching the Union Pearson Express, and expanding the Georgetown rail corridor to vastly increase GO Transit service (GO is a division of Metrolinx).

Under his watch, Metrolinx has also advanced planning for regional express rail, a massive $13.5-billion expansion of GO service that will provide the region with more frequent, electrified service.

McCuaig, who lives in Port Credit and commutes by GO everyday, professes to have few regrets. But he does concede that occasionally Metrolinx has stumbled.

He acknowledges that the agency got the fare structure for the Union Pearson Express wrong. When it launched in 2015, few people were willing to pay the initial $27.50that the service charged to take riders between the airport and Union Station, and after nine months of running mostly empty trains Metrolinx was forced to slash prices. Ridership spiked, but for months the train, which was supposed to break even, was so underused it cost taxpayers $52 per rider.

Yet McCuaig maintains that Metrolinx got most of the important things right, because it finished the $456-millionproject on budget and in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games, as planned. “The one thing that didn’t work, right from the beginning...was the fare structure. But it’s also the one thing that we could change,” he said.

He takes a similar view of the Presto system, which has been relatively trouble free on most of the GTHA’s transit systems but has been dogged by technical problems since being deployed on the TTC, even as the program went over budget. At one point last year as many as 12 per cent of card readers on buses weren’t working, while card reload machines were so faulty they’re being replaced.

Asked whether he was concerned the glitches risked undermining public trust in Metrolinx, McCuaig dismissed the premise. He said that the particularities of installing Presto at subway stations and on old streetcars that were never meant to carry the technology meant there would always be growing pains, and that they will be rectified.

“I know some people will say, it’s been done elsewhere, why can’t it be just done here? And that’s absolutely true. Except that every ‘here’ is slightly different than the other ‘heres,’” he said, adding that was confident Presto will achieve its goal of 99 per cent reliability this year.

A career public servant, McCuaig, who last year made a salary of $367,197.85, is leaving Metrolinx to take a job in the federal government as an executive adviser at the new Canada Infrastructure Bank. He said he wanted “a chance to shape something right from the beginning.”

His departure comes at a time of some uncertainty. Metrolinx is locked in a legal battle with Bombardier over a $770-million, light rail vehicle order that the company allegedly botched.

Depending on the outcome of the case, the Crosstown project could be headed for significant and costly delays. If he was nervous about the decision, McCuaig didn’t let on.

“Whenever you go to court, there’s always the opportunity for outcomes that are not optimal for either party’s perspective. But again we’re confident,” he said.

McCuaig is similarly optimistic about the future of Metrolinx. The agency was legislated into existence in 2006 by the provincial Liberals, and has never operated with another party in power. The Liberals are polling dismally ahead of the June 2018 election, and historically the Ontario PC’s don’t share the Grits’ zeal for massive public transit investment.

But McCuaig said no matter who forms the next government, with the population of the GTHA expanding and municipal boundaries becoming less relevant, there will always be a need for an organization like Metrolinx to co-ordinate the region’s transit.

“The importance of transportation and transit infrastructure in this city and this region is not going away.”