Senior TTC staffers are scapegoats in Spadina subway fiasco
Andy Byford took the blame, but senior staffers took the fall over massive Spadina subway cost overruns.

thestar.com
March 20, 2015
By Royson James

TTC boss Andy Byford did what he does best: he took the blame.

This time, though, two senior staffers - competent, hard-working, intelligent fellows named Sameh Ghaly and Andy Bertolo - took the fall.

Sacrificial lambs they were - summarily fired, sent to the slaughter to satiate a political axis that has spun out of control.

They paid, with their jobs, for the cost-overruns and delays on the Spadina subway. Nobody - not the mayor, not the city manager, not the TTC chair, not the satraps who are supposed to provide oversight on public projects, ever pay for such failures.

Ghaly’s and Bertolo’s crime, officially?

They couldn’t get along with the numerous contractors that kept bumping into each other in the money pit that the subway extension to York Region has become.

But really, they are scapegoats, saddled with the sins of their political and bureaucratic masters who preside over public projects with priestly immunity.

As the Star’s Tess Kalinowski reports, project after project - from Clarkson GO station to building bike lanes - are behind schedule and/or over budget.

At a news conference, called in response to a Star story stating the subway cost overruns could top $400 million, Byford admitted to the project being over budget by about $150 million. He wouldn’t speculate on the multi-millions more taxpayers will need to settle numerous claims from the same contractors - each one blaming the other; all of them blaming the TTC.

He admitted the subway that was to open in 2015, won’t see passengers until late 2017. He wouldn’t, couldn’t guarantee that it won’t be later.

He said his employees did their best with a ridiculous process that saddled them with an unwieldy number of contractors and subcontractors; a recipe for the disaster it’s become; predictably so.

He couldn’t promise it won’t happen on the next big transit project, the Bloor-Danforth extension to the Scarborough Town Centre.

It won’t - at least, not to the TTC. It’s inconceivable that they will manage this project, going forward.

Byford said the TTC has its hands full - just keeping up with the demands of running a system, modernizing it, catching up with the rest of the world by implementing an automatic fare system, and, essentially, jerking itself into the 21st century.

He didn’t say the TTC is toast. He might as well have.

The once mighty organization is a shadow of itself. The brand is tarnished; its name, mud.

On Friday, Byford said as much. First, a stunning concession that the worst possible option to salvage the Spadina-York subway project is to leave it with the TTC. It would cost more and take longer to complete.

“We don’t see any pros in that option; only cons,” he said.

The TTC used to build subways on budget and on time. Then the St. Clair streetcar project went hopelessly over budget as politicians and citizens piled on non-transit costs. And now, the Spadina subway debacle.

“To take on another project, we’d be overwhelmed,” Byford said, exasperated.

In essence, Byford has surrendered.

SmartTrack? The mayor’s 53-km, 22-stop priority, promised in seven years, with no committed funding, no chosen route, no studies?

Byford wasn’t asked about that directly. But this is what he said about lessons learned from the Spadina screw-up:

Before you tell citizens when the project will be finished, you may want to get the funding, conclude the design, route and approvals and select one contractor who is responsible for cost overruns.

You think?

In the 2015 city budget, there is not a word about the coming cost overrun that will hit city taxpayers with a $90-million tab and York Region for $60 million. Byford said he has been warning the politicians on the transit commission about the possibility since 2013.

City manager Joe Pennachetti and York Region CAO Bruce Macgregor sit on a fancy committee that monitors the progress of this project. Have you heard them screaming in the council chamber...“Beware! Beware! Money overboard, buried in tunnels around York University.”

The excuse is that the city can’t tell the TTC what to do once a project has been given to them. Poppycock! If it were Pennachetti’s job on the line - or the mayor’s - you’d see how quickly directives are sent up the track to TTC head office.

The problem is systemic. Nathan Phillips Square was supposed to be finished in 2012. It will be 2019 before it’s done; and it will cost $60 million, not the $40 million promised.

Cost for revitalization along Queens Quay has jumped to $129 million from $93 million.

If it were just the Spadina subway extension we could all go back to sleep, contented that city officials have our future well in hand. Not so. Our public officials can’t seem to build anything on budget or on time.

Pennachetti says that’s not fair. A few big problem projects mask the fact that, for the most part, city projects come in under budget on “thousands of projects.”

There’s been $325 million in savings on capital projects over the last five years, he says.

Thanks for that, sir. Make that the norm and public confidence might return.

For now, the TTC has hit rock bottom. And the poor serfs who work there are demoralized and beaten down - thrown to the wolves with not nearly enough supervision.

“Does the structure work, no?” Pennachetti admits, when pushed and pushed to accept responsibility. “It must change. Council must take back responsibility from the TTC and new major capital expansion must be delivered through public-private partnerships.”

How many more scapegoats and sacrificial lambs like Sameh Ghaly and Andy Bertolo before the whole system is uprooted and tossed?