Advertisement

TfL’s new boss Andy Byford worked wonders in New York — we’re lucky to have him

Toronto Star via Getty Images
Toronto Star via Getty Images

London, meet Train Daddy. That’s the name New Yorkers gave Andy Byford when he ran the city’s transit system.

Now he’s heading here to run Transport for London. It’s the best news our city has had in months.

I first got to know him on a sunny day in Toronto six years ago.

We were standing in the back yard of a bus depot out in the suburbs and for the next two hours we whirled through the city by bus, metro, tram and on foot.

Back then he worked for a city mayor who was making headlines around the world at the time for all the wrong reasons, unless you think that smoking crack cocaine from a glass pipe adds character to the job.

Byford bubbled with energy, he dashed about saying hi to travellers, lifting spirits, making plans.

We’ve kept in touch and I’ve been hoping to hear the news that he’s heading our way.

His first stop after Toronto was New York, where he took over the shambles of what was once one of the greatest public transport systems on earth, now run in the craziest of ways.

Byford answered to the state governor, Andrew Cuomo and not his rival, the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio.

For the 766 days he lasted there he was the closest transport comes to a star: he shared fist bumps with cleaners, did the rounds of subway stops, got on-time performance up from 58 per cent when he arrived to 80 per cent, and pushed for a multi-billion investment programme to rescue the system.

In the end, Cuomo wouldn’t buy his dream and Byford had to go: on his last day, there were selfies with commuters and a bagpipe band playing.

The New York Times said he “brought hope to beleaguered riders”. The mayor tried to get him to stay on.

All this makes Byford sound like some sort of can-do Californian guru, but in fact he’s very British.

He’s from ­Plymouth, his grandfather was a ­London bus driver, he used to work on the Underground and he learned his skills on the transport system that he is now coming here to run.

Andy Byford is smart, brings big ambitions, loves public transport and says he has never owned a car in his life

He’s smart, shaven-headed, trilingual, brings big ambitions, loves public transport and says he has never owned a car in his life.

He’ll need all this because the job he is taking on will be hell.

That’s not the fault of his two predecessors, Sir Peter Hendy — who says Byford’s appointment is “brilliant” — and the current holder, Mike Brown, who has stayed on longer than he planned in the job to cope with Covid.

Hendy kept London moving during the Olympics and helped to get Crossrail going; Brown balanced the books despite a fares freeze — at least until Tube ridership crashed from record highs to the lowest daily total since Queen Victoria ruled.

That’s been followed by a spat between central government, the Mayor and TfL over a bailout, with the system heading for shutdown because of lack of cash.

A strange thing about transport systems is that although they are made up of thousands of workers and millions of passengers, one great leader can make the difference between confidence and chaos: they need someone at the top who can dare to dream.

London’s Tube network was shaped in the last century by the brilliant American Lord, who built and led it for four decades.

Now it will take someone like Byford, and not a bureaucrat, to get its momentum back.

He’s got a massive to-do list: return to growth, fight the crazy two-metre social-distancing rule that doesn’t apply on trains in France and Germany, persuade us the Tube is safe to use, get Crossrail open, fend off the Treasury and No 10 who think they can run it better when they can’t, stop the Mayor’s re-election campaign messing things up with dim promises, deal with the building of HS2, get London cycling, keep the air clean and open routes for electric scooters.

He’ll have to work out which investment plans to scrap and which to keep, too — the oldest trains in mainland Britain in daily use aren’t on some ­backwater branch line in the north of England but on the Bakerloo and ­Piccadilly lines.

Replacing them soon matters.

Byford will love all this. The Mayor made the right choice in appointing him and now he and his predecessor, currently in No 10, need to trust him to get it right.

Meanwhile, if he spots you on a platform, get ready for the new boss to rush up and say hi.

Read more

Briton who ran New York subway returns to lead TfL amid cash crisis