Crucial TTC subway project under review amid executive departures
Thestar.com
July 11, 2018
Ben Spurr
The TTC has placed a crucial project to increase capacity on Toronto’s most crowded subway line under review, amid a staffing shakeup that has seen senior figures involved with the program either depart the agency or placed on leave.
TTC CEO Rick Leary revealed the consultant review of the $562-million automatic train control (ATC) system last week in a single paragraph in his 68-page monthly report to the board.
The signalling system, which the TTC is in the process of installing on Line 1 (Yonge-University), would allow the agency to run trains closer together, enabling more service during the busiest times of day.
In an emailed statement, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said a decision to launch a review “should not suggest there’s a problem with a project,” but the agency would commission a review “to ensure a project will deliver what it has promised to deliver.”
He said the exercise will determine whether the installation of ATC will enable the promised capacity improvements without any additional work, or whether the TTC might also need to upgrade the subway line’s power supply, ventilation systems, and vehicle fleet in order to run the required additional trains.
It will also determine whether ATC infrastructure can be fully installed by the previously announced date of 2019, and after that, when the capacity improvements could be fully realized.
“If there are schedule issues, this review will inform that,” Ross said.
With regular ridership of 30,000 people per hour during morning peak periods, sections of the Yonge line south of Bloor station frequently exceed scheduled capacity of about 28,000 passengers per hour. High passenger volumes, particularly during subway delays, have recently sparked safety concerns.
According to the TTC, once ATC is operational it could increase capacity on the line by as much as 25 per cent, which is critical to relieving crowding on Line 1 until the proposed relief subway line can be built. The city estimates it could be until 2031 until the new subway is complete.
News of the review follows the departure of a number of TTC managers whose responsibilities included ATC work.
On April 10, Mike Palmer, who had been the TTC’s chief operating officer since April 2017, left the agency. He had been with the TTC since 2014, serving first as deputy chief operating officer and then acting chief operating officer.
The head of the ATC program would have reported directly to Palmer, according to Ross.
Two other senior managers involved in subway infrastructure have also left, Ross confirmed.
A manager of signal operations has been placed on leave, according to a source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss staffing matters.
Ross said the TTC doesn’t talk publicly about personnel issues, and wouldn’t say whether any of the staffing changes were related to the ATC review.
Pete Tomlin, the senior project manager for ATC, remains in his job.
Reached by email Palmer, who is now working as director of rail operations and signalling at a private company, declined to answer questions about ATC and his departure from the transit agency.
In an interview, TTC board member Councillor John Campbell also said he couldn’t discuss personnel matters.
He said “there has been a gap of information provided to the senior management on how far things had progressed” with ATC.
According to Campbell, former CEO Andy Byford and then Leary “were led to believe that things were better than they were.”
The councillor said sometime after Byford left the agency in December “it was revealed that this project in terms of getting from point A to point B wasn’t moving along as quickly as it should have, and people were let down.”
The TTC has contracted Transit Systems Engineering, an engineering consultant firm, to conduct the review of ATC. The agency plans to produce a report on the issue by the end of 2018.
