Next Stop, Public Transit after COVID-19

October 13, 2022

The Empire Club of Canada Presents

Next Stop, Public Transit after COVID-19

Chairman: Sal Rabbani, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada

Moderator
Anita Sharma, Network News Anchor, Host, Moderator, CTV News

Distinguished Guest Speakers
Richard J. Leary, CEO, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)
David Lebeter, COO, Hydro One

Head Table Guests
Theresa Cooke, Vice-President, Smart Infrastructure Sales, Siemens
Joseph D’Urso, Vice-President, Sales, City View Specialty Vehicles
Donna Jablonsky, Director, Transmission Asset Management, Hydro One
Michael Kobzar, Board Director, National Director of Sales, Transmission Systems, Empire Club of Canada, Siemens Energy Canada
Neil Pakey, CEO, Nieuport Aviation
Dave Partington, Advisory Board Member, MTB Transit Solutions

Introduction
It is a great honour for me to be here at the Empire Club of Canada today, which is arguably the most famous and historically relevant speaker’s podium to have ever existed in Canada. It has offered its podium to such international luminaries as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Audrey Hepburn, the Dalai Lama, Indira Gandhi, and closer to home, from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau; literally generations of our great nation's leaders, alongside with those of the world's top international diplomats, heads of state, and business and thought leaders.

It is a real honour and distinct privilege to be invited to speak to the Empire Club of Canada, which has been welcoming international diplomats, leaders in business, and in science, and in politics. When they stand at that podium, they speak not only to the entire country, but they can speak to the entire world.

Welcome Address by Sal Rabbani, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Good afternoon. Welcome to the 119th season of the Empire Club of Canada. To our in-person attendees joining us at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto, I'm delighted to be here with you today. And our virtual audience, joining in live or on demand, thank you for your participation and support. This incredible community of colleagues and peers is the driving force behind our mandate to engage, debate, educate and advanced dialogue on issues of importance to Canadians.

Welcome. My name is Sal Rabbani, and I'm the President of the Board of Directors of the Empire Club of Canada. To formally begin this afternoon, I want to acknowledge that we're gathering today on the traditional and treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the homelands of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wyandot Peoples. Tomorrow, September 30th, is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and Orange Shirt Day, a day to raise awareness about the past, and ongoing impacts of residential schools. We acknowledge the colonial history of Indian residential schools and the intergenerational impact on the Indigenous community, and honour the children who never returned home, the survivors and their families. The Empire Club will continue to provide a platform to profile Indigenous voices and perspectives as we continue to take meaningful action towards reconciliation. Lastly, in the spirit of healing and reconciliation, I invite you to wear orange tomorrow, wherever you may be, and attend an Orange Shirt Day event in your community. Simple online searches will help you find a local walk, ceremony, or powwow.

The Empire Club of candidates strives to bring new thought-provoking perspectives on issues of the day. So, turning today's event, I'm very much looking forward to the conversation, as the way we move through our city influences all of us. Today's conversation will inform us of the complexity required to manage one of North America's most prominent public transit systems, a system that we often take for granted. It ushers employees safely to work, it is a reprieve from the weather as we go about the city, and it's a shared space for families, professionals, and individuals to access the amenities that Toronto offers.

As a forum that looks to engage and participate with its audience, I invite you to submit questions for our speaker by scanning the QR code found on your program booklet or accessing the Q&A function under your online video player. I also want to take this opportunity to recognize the Empire Club's distinguished past presidents, board of directors, staff, and volunteers. Thank you for your contributions in making this event a success.

The Empire Club is a not-for-profit organization, and we'd like to recognize our sponsors who generously support the club and make these events possible and complimentary for our online viewers to attend. Thank you to our lead event sponsors, Hydro One; thank you to our VIP reception sponsor, CityView; and thank you to our supporting sponsors, MTB Transit Solutions and Nieuport Aviation. Thank you. And lastly, thank you to our season sponsor, Bruce Power. For those joining us online, if you require technical assistance, please start a conversation with our team using the chat button on the right-hand side of your viewer. It is now my pleasure to invite David Lebeter, COO of Hydro One, to introduce our guest speakers. David, welcome.

Opening Remarks by David Lebeter, CEO, Hydro One Thank you, Sal for that introduction. And good afternoon, and welcome to everybody. It's really a pleasure to be here today addressing such a distinguished crowd, and I'm really looking forward to the today's topic. Rick and Anita, I know you're gonna do a great job. It might seem strange, why would Hydro One be lead sponsor for an event on public transportation? And it was a question that I pondered a little bit. And then it became really clear to me, there's so many similarities between the Toronto Transit Corporation and Hydro One.

Let me just give you some examples. We both provide an essential service that Ontarians rely on. Whether it's transportation or electricity, they rely on that service to be available, to be reliable, and to be cost effective. We both energize Ontario’s economy. In the case of Hydro One, we do it by providing electricity where and when it's needed, whether it's for households, small businesses, or industry or increasingly, transportation. In the case of the Toronto Transit Corporation, their job is to make sure people can move seamlessly and effectively across the GTA to get to where they need to go.

I for one I'm a regular transit user. I ride that system every day, and it's a great system. And I rely on that system to get to meetings and to get to work on time. And I'm not the only one. We both share an ambitious goal of achieving net zero. We both set ambitious targets of a significant reduction in our carbon footprint; the TTC a fifty percent reduction by 2032, I believe, carbon neutral by 2050, and in our case, a thirty percent reduction by 2030.

And here's where the story starts to get really interesting and you see the similarities between our two companies, as we're seeing the merge of the transportation sector and the electricity sector, they're coming together. And increasingly, what we see today is the transportation sector relying on electricity. What we're going to see in the future is the electricity sector relying on the transportation sector for capacity and storage. So, you're gonna see these two sectors coming together very clearly in the coming years. And for those reasons, Hydro One is very proud to be here today, and are very proud to be the lead sponsor this event. And I'm really looking forward to the comments.

Some projections say that the demand for electricity in this province will go up by 1.5 to possibly 3x as we electrify, and we all will work towards our decarbonization goals. That means we all have an important role to play in achieving those goals. The TTC will be critical to the city of Toronto achieving its goals, and it's going to be critical to the rest of this province in achieving their goals—as is Hydro One by the way. We've got three key projects on the books right now that we're working—not on the books, they’re actually in the implementation—to increase supply to the GTA, because we recognize, along with our friends at Toronto Hydro, the fantastic growth that's occurring in the GTA and the importance of having reliable electricity supply that.

Now I get to embarrass my friend Rick—who I just met today, so I'm going to call you friend, I hope you don't mind—I get to embarrass Rick a little bit by telling you a bit about him, and hopefully I get this right, so I'm going to have to look at my notes for this part. Rick had the dubious pleasure of taking the leadership of TTC right around the time the pandemic hit, and Rick I can share that experience, I joined Hydro One in January of 2020; did not expect to be walking into the middle of a pandemic when I moved to Toronto. So, we share that experience. Steering a large company that is so important to the City of Toronto through a pandemic requires strong leadership. And everything I've seen and heard Rick, you provided that in spades, your organization, so thank you on behalf of all the ridership for what you've done there.

Rick began his career as a subway train attendant in Boston—following in the footsteps of your father, I believe, which is really cool, multi-generational transportation, that is so neat—but worked his way up to the Chief Operating Officer. And the thing you can really appreciate about someone who's had that career path, they actually understand how the people that run the system think, and they actually understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the system. And I think the Toronto Transit Corporation is so fortunate to have somebody who has that experience from starting at the bottom working to the top, actually at the helm today.

Before joining the TTC, you were the general manager of the York Region Transit Authority, where I think you won some awards for the work that you did there. And you were named, in 2022, the Outstanding Public Transportation Manager by the American Public Transportation Association, which is a—congratulations, that's a huge honour, I can only imagine. And as I said earlier, as a regular rider of the TTC, I feel comfortable. And I was telling Rick over lunch, I feel safe riding the TTC, and I feel especially comfortable knowing he's in charge.

Joining Rick up on stage is Anita Sharma. Anita is a 20-year journalist—I won't say more than 20, I'll just say 20 and leave it at that. Trying to be nice here, you've gotta be politically correct, right? She's a network news anchor. She specializes in business, a niche group of journalists with expertise in business, specifically the stock market, real estate, and personal finance. She loves to travel internationally. She's a known public speaker and facilitator, I believe. And I think you're not afraid to shy away from difficult issues or topics, are you? No, good. So, with that, I'd like to welcome Rick Leary and Anita Sharma to the stage. Thank you.

Richard Leary, CEO, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, David, for those kind words and the kind introduction. And I want to say thank you very much for the invite, and thank you to the Empire Club for hosting this today. You know, it's great to be back in person, I'm really enjoying this. And I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to tell you how we at the TTC are welcoming back our customers as the City of Toronto reopens, and we talk about what the new normal will be.

Now, before I welcome the opportunity to sit down with Anita and join in a conversation, I would like to share with you just a quick overview of what we're doing here at the TTC post-pandemic and leading up to the pandemic. Many of us know that I joined the TTC just over eight years ago. And former CEO Andy Byford and I, we really shared a vision of a transit system that puts our customers first. So, that work to change the culture and operational performance of the TTC really began right away, almost immediately. And it's continued today, in the five years that I've been leading this organization. It began by looking at the business and every aspect of the business, and how we could do things differently to improve really through performance measures. And those of you who know me, know that I'm very critical, and I am a real believer in metrics. It's the best way to hold ourselves accountable into what is working well, as well as ultimately, to ensure that we're delivering a service that we advertise to our customer.

Now, for a long time, our industry, and the TTC included, measured success based on our ridership numbers. The more riders we had, the better we were doing. But I'm going to tell you that I never really felt right about that measurement. It's just a number, right? And our ridership is just one piece of what we do in the much bigger picture. And the fact is, I don't use the term riders, I use the term customers. I think that's more important. It's an important distinction because customers are people who have choices in how they travel, and we want them to choose the TTC as often as possible.

You know, to look at our operation from a customer service perspective, we also looked at how we hold ourselves accountable to become the mode of choice for people. And the real question that we ended up asking ourselves is, how do we make people want to take the TTC? So, to do this, we began kind of reorienting, and looking at everything we do, and every aspect of the business from a customer focus. We did this with looking at safety, diversity and inclusion, cleanliness, and on time performance is always top of mind. But even the smaller things in our mind, you know, when we're looking at the fundamentals of wayfinding and the design of our stations, we began to take another look at how we were doing that all through the customer service lens.

Now I move on, and I’ll talk about employees. You know, we also want our employees to feel valued and respected. An engaged employee and satisfied customers leads to strong morale and increased ridership. Two ingredients are important ingredients in our recipe for success.

I'd also tell you that much of this work started before the COVID 19 pandemic hit. But during the pandemic, a lot changed as we all know. In March of 2020, the TTC was carrying 1.7 million customers a day; and that dropped to roughly fifteen percent of that overnight. And I love to talk about the TTC and the importance it is to the City of Toronto. Because when you start comparing the TTC to other major transit systems in North America, the TTC is the third largest transit system in North America. Only New York City and Mexico City have greater ridership than the TTC. I move on a little bit as I talk about the pandemic, and we continued during the pandemic to try to provide full service where we could, in order to be there for the people of this great city, who needed us to get to work and important appointments. We carried essential workers to and from their jobs, we took health care workers to the hospital, seniors to doctor's appointments, and families to grocery stores and the pharmacies.

At the TTC, I would tell you we have an amazing team of individuals that are committed. They responded early and quickly to the challenges of COVID-19. I'd also tell you, we took a lot of opportunity during the pandemic. And we took the opportunity or took the advantage of this period of time of low ridership to make significant progress on critical state of good repair work. We had three ten-day partial closures of our subway March, April, and May of 2021, to do things like asbestos removal. And you think about it, we demonstrated we could be flexible and audible and in tough times with low ridership, and we hope that that's a once in a lifetime experience. But it is worth noting that the work that was accomplished during these shutdowns helped us eliminate seventy-five to one hundred weekend closures that were planned otherwise, and would have been required in the coming years. I was very proud of the organization for the position it took in jumping on doing things differently.

You know, I look at the leadership mindset that continues at this organization to transform for the future. As the pandemic eases, we're seeing our ridership come back. And right now, I'll tell you that we're roughly about seventy percent of our pre-pandemic ridership on the weekday, and eighty percent on the weekend. So, you really do see that discretionary trip being taken in the city as we see the vibrant city coming back to life. You know, we worked hard, I tell you, to be ready for the increase in ridership that we knew was going to take place post-Labour Day this past September, earlier this month. The question is, what did we do?

Among the improvements that we made was restoring the three-minute service for trains on Lines One and Line Two. We increased 29 bus routes and 2 streetcar route services, a lot of new service coming back into the TTC. But we were also cognizant of the fact that we know that unplanned closures and diversions and the delays that occur in the city really impact our customer. So, we thought differently. And we wanted to think about how we were going to protect the service and protect service resiliency. In doing this, staff came up with a plan of maintaining a pool of unscheduled operators and vehicles, on all of our modes, to fill in the gaps and plug in the gaps within the city, knowing that every day something happens somewhere—you look at the construction in the city. We've also recruited, hired, and trained more frontline employees, to ensure that we continue to meet our customer's needs and deliver the service that we advertise. Our goal is to hire almost one thousand new operators, recruited, trained, and in the seat by the end of this year. And I tell you that we're well on our way.

Now, this morning, I had the great opportunity—it was an exciting opportunity for me—to be with Mayor Tory and Jaye Robinson at Lawrence Station. Because we announced that we finally have automatic train control along the entire Line One, our largest subway line. Thank you. For a guy who has been this long on trains that really excites me. I might not show it all the time, but it really excites me. Because you know, we worked on that really hard, and I'm really proud of the people that did this work; they made it happen. And they understand the importance of investing in public transit. It's not a cost, public transit, it’s an investment into the betterment of this city. And I can't wait for our customers to actually see and experience the benefits of this new signal system. You know, the benefits like trains running much more smoothly, and timely, and closer together, and safer, while reducing travel times and wait times; huge benefits.

But having more and better service is just one part of the bigger equation. We also want our customers to know that safety and comfort is a priority for us while they're using the TTC. Over the summer, we worked to improve the cleanliness of our system by hiring one hundred students to conduct in-station cleaning blitzes. We wanted customers that haven't been with us in a while to realize and know that we were focusing on things that mattered to them as we welcome them back to our system. We also know that safety is top of mind of everyone—I can tell you it's also top of mind for all of us at the TTC. So, we put additional initiatives together, and put them in place to make sure that everyone feels secure on the TTC. Through our Stations Transformation Program, we're installing more cameras and repositioning staff to better monitor in-station activity, and to assist customers when needed. We've increased our special constable staff and are working with the city's Streets to Homes program, putting resources where they're needed to assist people in crisis. We're also reminding our customers of the safety features that we already have in place, such as our Safe TTC app, our designated waiting areas on subway platforms, as well as emergency alarm systems throughout our stations. And we're doing this with the big in-station advertising campaign.

Affordability. You know, as well as always wanting it to be safe and reliable, public transit is more affordable than other options—and we all know that, right? With programs like children 12 and under riding free, and the two-hour hop on and hop off transfer within the system, the TTC is a less expensive option than driving a car; especially now when you look at the gas prices and the prices for paying for parking around the city. We also know that we're a greener option. As most people already know, public transit is good for the environment, and we're doing our part to help reach the city's environmental goal as part of the Transform TO program. We've committed to making our fleet entirely zero-emissions by 2040, through the purchase of more battery electric vehicles. And I'm proud to tell you that we're currently, the TTC, the largest battery electric bus fleet in North America, and we're going to continue to look for ways to make our operations greener. Thank you for that. And I can tell you that our intent is to stay ahead of everyone in the industry. We are a leader here in Canada, and we want to demonstrate that.

You know, we've done a lot of work and we've said a lot of things, and there's a lot that we've prepared for, as I said, going into the fall. I'm very happy with all that. I want to let you know that much of what we're also doing is looking towards the future, because there's a lot to think about. We're very proud of what we're done, but we're also saying ourselves, we have to we have to be. And we know that, for example, that the population in the Greater Toronto Region is going to have massive population growth in the next two decades. And we, here in the city of Toronto ourselves, to prepare for a million more residents in the next twenty years. That's amazing. But we have to be ready for it. And as I said, public transit is an investment, it's not a cost. So, as we position ourselves, we want public transit to be the mode of choice. And not because people have to; we want it to be because they want to. And when they do this, we want them to have a pleasant experience. We want customers to feel safe and welcomed, where the service is reliable, and our staff are ready to assist them. And that's the TTC that we're looking at today.

You know, as the pandemic reminds us, there was a lot of people who relied on us during that pandemic. People that didn't have choices. And we think about that, because the TTC is very proud of what it's done for this city. And we commit to continue to help to ensure that this city remains prosperous. So, with that, I'm looking forward to sitting down with you, Anita, and having a little discussion. Thank you.

Anita Sharma, Network News Anchor, Host, Moderator, CTV News
That was great. Welcome everyone. We were just talking at the table about how awesome it is to finally get to some sense of normal, right? To actually see human beings that aren't your relatives across the table, being able to have a lunch or dinner, so on and so forth, and talk business. But Rick, this isn't just business, is it? TTC. Anybody who's from Toronto—and if you're from Toronto, you say Tronno—will tell you that formative years were built riding the better way. The TTC. I grew up in Scarborough. I took the bus before I had my license to get to the subway, to get to downtown, to be with my friends. And I know I'm not the only one that experienced that. There are great experiences on the TTC, and there are some not so great experiences on the TTC. And therein lies the reason for our conversation today. Decades have passed—David was very kind—it's been decades since I've been broadcasting, and it's been decades since I've been taking public transit alongside, I'm sure, a lot of folks here. World-class city. You're from Boston, but you're in Toronto; world-class city. How does the TTC, do you think, fit in with this world-class city?

Richard Leary
I love that question, because you know, when we talk about the importance—and that's why I mentioned New York and New Mexico, and you know where I come from—public transit is really an investment, right? Because people depend on, just like Dave said, like electricity, right? If there's an expectation, it's there, you flip the switch, it comes on. People need public transit to get to where they need to go, right? It’s so important in their lives personally. Like I said, when I was talking, hospitals, visiting family, getting to school, I hear it every day. I hear it every day when there's a little delay. And that's why you see the TTC trying to do things differently, to make sure that we can audible, to do things to make sure that we are there. I'm always talking about providing the service you advertise. And that's what we're focusing on.

Anita Sharma
Now, I understand during the pandemic when a lot of folks were shuttered in—either forced to be shuttered in, or companies that ask them to stay home, whatever the reason may be—during the pandemic, I understand you took, you addressed it, some opportunities to do some enhancements, do some repairs to the subway system that I believe otherwise you would not have been able to do had you been running at full capacity. Is that right?

Richard Leary
That is correct. You know, we took advantage of having that downtime. And it was a little inconvenient for those that were still taking public transit. But they understood, right? We communicated. We got out, we were talking to them, we made sure we told them what we were doing and why. And they were very gracious to know the reasons, and the fact that we didn't have to do seventy-five to a hundred weekend diversions later on. It was about that investment. And they understood.

Anita Sharma
Let's talk about that. I was asking a few friends and colleagues: all right, I'll be sitting down with Rick Leary, I'll be amongst these illustrious people here today. Everyone has a vested interest in the TTC running efficiently, seamlessly, hopefully cost effectively. What does that look like when you have weekend closures? When you say you're at seventy percent of pre-pandemic levels with respect to ridership. What does that look like when you have road closures and you're trying to lure people back to the transit system? Because for a lot of folks—Rick will appreciate it—that habit’s been broken, right? So, you're at 70. I know you told me earlier you want to get that back up to one hundred. How does that happen?

Richard Leary
You know, it's about communicating. It's telling people what we're doing, like making a big deal today at Lawrence Station; with the mayor, with the chair, we had the media there. Talking about the investment in public transit, and letting them know, now that were opened, those weekend diversions will dissipate, they'll go down in that area.

Anita Sharma
How much, do you think?

Richard Leary
Well, we know just from the diversion standpoint, on the signal system, that's 10 to 12 times a year; you know, we've been doing that for the last five years. So, now they can expect to have much more fluid system running in their neighbourhoods. So, there's a lot of benefits, that it is all about the investment. We try to get them excited. We have 60 electric buses, it's the largest fleet in North America. Telling them what we're doing. Telling them we're removing asbestos and we're beautifying the inside of their stations; we're doing things different. It’s continuing to have that discussion with them. And I like to talk about the reliability of the service, so we'll get you there when we tell you we’re gonna get you there.

Anita Sharma
When you tell folks you're gonna remove asbestos, I don't think you're gonna get any pushback.

Richard Leary
That was true. That's why it was a good message.

Anita Sharma
Folks understood that.

Richard Leary
Absolutely.

Anita Sharma
Talk to me a little bit, if you can, about automatic train control, ATC. That was a term that you threw out a couple of days ago—and I warned you, I said if some terms come out like that, we'll have to explain that for our audience—why is that significant for folks who are currently riding the TTC, and for folks who are considering getting back on it?

Richard Leary
Right. Well, a lot of people remember when you looked at, you know, '17, '18, '19, there was a lot of crowding going on on Line One...

Anita Sharma
Yeah.

Richard Leary
...right? We were putting 22 to 23 trains an hour through Yonge and Bloor. As we put the ATC system in, it ran much more fluid. And what it means is now we're putting 28, 29, 30 trains an hour through Yonge and Bloor. It means a faster, more fluid, less crowded system. You know, the system we just replaced was installed in 1954.

Anita Sharma
Wow.

Richard Leary
Right? So, we put a new electronic system in, trains closer together, safer, and it helped capacity. So, yeah, we want people—people will see, when you start taking the system, wow this is a lot more fluid than it ever was before.

Anita Sharma
Speaking of capacity, so you want to get that up to a hundred percent. I know a lot of folks in this room, when we were able to travel, got out, got reacquainted a little bit with the rest of the world. I know from experience, having travelled on public transit across the pond, boy, there’s cities and countries where the transit systems were seamless; they were effortless. There was a pride that the citizens had for their public transit. They were proud to jump on the transit. It was the lifeblood of their city, they saw that as the pulse of the city, right? As I guess the branches of a tree that sort of get them from A, B to Z, you know, back to Q, right? They saw that as a critical component. How do you think Torontonians, and by extension folks that live in the GTA—or is it the GTHA now—how do you think folks view the TTC?

Richard Leary
Let me tell you, those that are dependent on it that I’ve talked to, they love the integration of the service. Seventy percent of the people that take the subway actually transfer from a streetcar or a bus. So, it's a very integrated system, unlike many transit systems in North America, so that I think is fabulous. One of the things that we're working on, though, is working with our partners in the GTHA, the 905s, to do a better job integrating the services, right? To make it seamless and simple for people to come in, transfer. And so that's what we're working on. We're working with the province on that as well, and we're getting a lot of support from the outside; we want to see that, make it easy. One of the difficult things for people is watching a bus go by them that they can't even get on.

Anita Sharma
Yeah.

Richard Leary
Right? So, we're going to eliminate those barriers and make it more simple for people to take public transit.

Anita Sharma
It's like the bank teller taking notes, right? When there's 20 people in line and you're like, ‘hey, pick me, pick me!’ Yeah, you don't want to see the buses going by. Speaking of buses, electrification. David touched on it. There's that mergence now, between the folks who create the infrastructure and the folks who need it; for the folks who need to get to work, need to visit their family, their relatives, or their friends. What does that relationship look like now with the Hydro One’s of Canada, and perhaps around the world? How are you reconciling your need to get to an electrification stage, get there as fast as you possibly can, and working with your partners? Tell us about—I think what I'm more interested in are the key challenges that you're facing.

Richard Leary
You know, it's understanding there are multiple paths to get to where we want to go. We’ve been working with OPG, Ontario Power Generation, signed a contract with PowerON to actually come in and electrify our garages; they will design, build, operate and maintain the power systems. We know how to run a service, we know how to maintain buses, everybody doing their core thing. So, we have those things all lined up, while we're in the process of working on a contract to buy somewhere in the area of five hundred or six hundred buses in the next few years, with an option for additional more in the outer years—could be seven-fifty to nine hundred buses in the outer years. So, that's what we're working on today. You have to—we’re migrating into it, though, you know. We have 60, but we're going on that path. As I said earlier, we're three years ahead of our 2040 goal of zero emission. So, we're working on that very closely. And it's about partnerships, working with the city, working with everybody to get this done.

Anita Sharma
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about that. So, you've got your neighbours to the north, you have your neighbours to the east and the west, Durham Region, Brampton, Oakville, Mississauga to the west. What does that look like? Because when you're a rider, and let's say you live in Mississauga, or you live in Hamilton, and I understand the new work—and that's another discussion we can have, just that new work week, right? At least a couple of days, I understand folks are working from home. But the days that you actually do need to get into downtown Toronto, or just move around Toronto, and you don't want to take your car, your vehicle, what did those conversations look like with your partners to the north, the west, and the east?

Richard Leary
You know, we're all very close, you know. And we all—I understand that each one of these municipalities in the public transit systems are just as important to them as the TTC is to this city. So, what we do is we like to share experiences. When you talk about electrification of buses, we have a table of everybody at the table, and everybody sharing information together. More recently, you probably saw last week in the paper, Ottawa is going to buy electric buses off of our order, right? So, that's what we're trying to do is, you know, be a partner with everyone, right? If we're the leader, we share, and let them buy off our economies of scale. So, we're really working really closely when it comes to vehicle procurement, integration of the transit service, and just sharing all best practices.

Anita Sharma
I'm wondering more so as well, just about the riders themselves, in terms of, let's say you drop your few bucks in Brampton, right? And you take your bus or the train, perhaps you get to York Region, or perhaps somehow you get to Toronto, and then you have to pay again, and you have to pay again. If you want to make it easy for people to ride to go the better way...

Richard Leary
You gotta go that way.

Anita Sharma
...you gotta go that way.

Richard Leary
Right, yeah, I'm with you. So, when we talk about service integration, things that are within the control of us having discussions, there is a fair integration conversation going on with the regional transit systems, Metrolinx, the Province. As we try to get everyone to understand the importance of investing in eliminating those double fares as you're getting to. And that is a conversation. It's a challenging conversation, because it means funding. And who's going to pay for that funding, you know? And if we had additional funding, do I want to buy more buses and hire more operators and put more people on the street, or reduce the fares and the integration. But it’s a discussion that's happening. And my hope is that, in the near future, that funding becomes available for things like that. It'll make it more seamless for people to take public transit and travel.

Anita Sharma
Is this a situation where you can actually sit down with your partners from neighbouring transit lines and say—or corporations, or the region's rather—and sit down and say, okay, this is how we could accomplish this. You know, when I was in Germany, I think for about a month they had a thing where, I think, for 30 euros, unlimited train service. You can just—they wanted you to experience Germany. So, for 30 euros—don't quote me on the fine print, but—it was very enticing, especially for tourist, but also for folks who live there, to jump on the train and understand that cost would not be an issue. Because from the German perspective, they said, we don't want empty trains. We want folks on these trains. And you said, you want to get to one hundred percent capacity.

Richard Leary
Right.

Anita Sharma
So, now you've got the pandemic, right? We’re still technically in the pandemic. And we've talked at the table, Sal and I were talking about just the changing the system, just how people are working differently. You can talk a little bit about sourcing for employees, I know that's a challenge across the board. But when you've got this change, now, in dynamic, where folks may be even less reluctant to take the TTC. How are you going to bridge that gap?

Richard Leary
Good question. You know, I, we talk about this a lot. You asked about how I engaged with the other transit systems. The question is, who's going to come up with the sixty million dollars? When I sit with my friends from York Region, or Brampton, or Mississauga, we know there's a cost element to eliminating that, to bring people back. Who's going to bear that cost? That becomes the question, and it becomes a political question. And those are the things that we’ve raised those issues up. So, we have those discussions, but those are the discussions that we bring to the boards, our councils, and ultimately to the upper levels of government, because someone's going to have to bear that cost to eliminate those costs for people. And again, it comes down to—it's like that conversation about making public transit free. The TTC generates 1.3 billion dollars a year pre-pandemic through the farebox. Would you make public transit free, or would you—what would you do better with the 1.3 billion dollars if they wanted to give you that money to reinvest in further transit? There's a lot of tradeoffs here, a lot of tough decisions to be made.

Anita Sharma
Absolutely. And speaking of tradeoffs, now, you know, you've had the CEO hat on the whole time. But aside from the internal workings of the TTC, you are a massive corporation here, one that's just the lifeblood of this glorious city of ours. How are you finding this now with workers at home, coming to the office? What do you see as the future of Toronto? Your colleague Stuart was telling me that ridership on the weekends has actually gone up.

Richard Leary
Yeah, that discretionary ridership has gone up higher than the weekday ridership. And it’s actually a question I'd like to pose to the audience, what we're going to do in the future, because, you know, I've required at the TTC people to come back two to three days a week, right? And talked to the stores and the little shops around where we work, and they keep saying when are you bring everybody back, you know? We’re killing our business; we need people back on the city. How's the city going to be vibrant if people don't come back? And yet you’ve got that kind of a pull, right? People don't want to come back, right? People now seem to have options with other jobs available.

We're seeing the people, the young—and I was having this conversation with some friends the other day, and if I was young, I'd be wanting to come into the office, because I'd want to know the boss and I’d want to engage with the boss; I’d want to demonstrate what I could do. But people just—I'm kind of perplexed to be honest with you. And I'm hoping that the conversations here can give us some direction on where we're going. It's no longer about the pandemic when it comes to ridership for the TTC, it's about the work from home policy, right? And so, we—and I always talk about matching capacity, demand, and how much service we're going to provide. All that is taken into consideration, and we start looking about how much we invest in public transit, because are they coming back to the city.

Anita Sharma
It's wonderful, you know, we have these conversations. I wonder if I'd be doing what I'm doing today if I was fully remote. And I know you wouldn't be, right? Because as David had mentioned, you worked your way up in Boston. What's been the most surprising thing for you to learn, working specifically for the TTC?

Richard Leary
You know, I'm going to tell you, a lot of my friends in the industry, we have these conversations, right? The CEO in New York, and Boston, we talk about this. We have, there’s so many similarities regarding old transit systems from the early 1900s, the state of repair, the infrastructure, the lack of capital investment to upgrade, the balances we have, the farebox right now. So, when that people ask me that question, I say to myself, I don't see, in my 39 years in this business, a lot of differences in running an organization like this, at least in my discussions. There’s just so many similarities, it's amazing. And we all recognize the importance of what we do to the economic impact of the city itself, right? So, it's—for me, I'm very passionate about this, I love this—it's all in the hearts and minds, about what we do and making a difference in people's lives.

Anita Sharma
Yeah. You call them customers, right? The riders.

Richard Leary
Yeah. So, I couldn't identify one thing that I would say is different from any discussions I have with others, believe it or not.

Anita Sharma
Well, you're tackling some key issues, right? You mentioned some of them at the podium there. They seem like minor issues in a discussion, but man, it makes a difference when you're on a subway and it's not clean, you don't feel safe. How important was that for you as a priority, to really tackle that issue, and where do you think you are with that right now?

Richard Leary
So yeah, that’s a great question, because it’s all about listening to our customers, right? And we heard what was happening all through the pandemic. And so, we literally got a group of us to sit down and say, okay, listening to the customers, the customer's always right, what can we do? And working with the city program Streets to Homes, for instance, we knew there was a lot of homelessness, there's mental health and society. How do we work to help people with that? And Streets to Homes came in, joined us with our special constables in helping people. Those are the type of things we want to do. You know, we know that cleanliness became an issue as well. The idea of getting kids jobs during the summer, to come in and help us scrub down these stations. And they literally were scrubbing walls, and floors, and stairs, and the tactile yellow strip, scrubbing them for us, right? Because, you know, they needed jobs. and we needed work to be done. So, it's those type of partnerships that we look at to improve the perception of public transit, so the people say, yeah, I want to come back and take it. I would say to this crew here, if you haven't taken it lately, please try it. And if your staff aren’t taking it, please ask them to try it.

Anita Sharma
I'm going to take the subway home.

Richard Leary
Okay.

Anita Sharma
In that vein, I'm curious to know, everyone I've spoken to thus far has said subways, subways, subways, tell Rick we need more subways. But at the same time, we talk a lot about buses and the electrification of buses, which of course is so critical, given what we're seeing happen around the world—discussion for another day. What's your priority, buses or subways? How you encounter or deal with NIMBYism?

Richard Leary
You know, for me, it's about the integration of service, right? We’ve got to be looked at as doing things differently. Just a few years ago, we opened the first bus rapidway out of Eglington, and we want to do more of that. We know that we have roadways in this city that have more congestion—and sometimes I'm amazed when I talk about it publicly, about intersections of the city where forty-five hundred people a day board a bus, right?

Anita Sharma
It's because they don’t think they have another way, though.

Richard Leary
Many people don't have another way, right?

Anita Sharma
Yeah.

Richard Leary
They only have public transit. And that's what makes us so important for their lives, right? So, yes, I'm a big supporter of subways; I'm just a big supporter of expanding public transit within the city itself. You know, a few years ago, we took the, I call it the spider map that we have in the subway, and I said let's make sure people know we have rail in the city, right? That’s R-A-I-L, right? And we started putting the streetcar network or the bus network, and then educating, communicating it so that people knew what is available in the city. And now, we look at the expansion programs, and they've been led by Metrolinx; they're doing a fabulous job. Because for me, it was, somebody just has to build it, we’ve gotta stop talking about it and build it. So, you know, very supportive of what Metrolinx is doing with all the expansion programs.

Anita Sharma
It's just such a fascinating time, isn't it, for the City of Toronto. You talked about—and David, I believe, and Sal talked about, somebody talked about it—the number of immigrants that continue to pile into the city. There's a vibrancy here in Toronto, it's just, pardon the pun, electric. And you want, I would think, a transit system that supports that electricity that you're seeing in this city. You know, we've talked about trying to get more IT talent into the city. I wrote an article where, I think outside of San Fran, Toronto is the second biggest hub for attracting tech talent. Like, how huge is that? How huge is that for a city in terms of not only promoting and maintaining diversity and energy, but just increasing it ever more so. Can the TTC handle that?

Richard Leary
There's no doubt. And I’m going to take this as a softball from you to me, because—and I'm gonna lead into them with this—is the fact that diversity is one of the core missions that we have right now at the TTC. One of the challenges that we had early on, was people were coming to me telling me that they were very uncomfortable letting their children take the TTC because they didn't see people that looked like them working at the TTC. And it was just a few years ago we came up with the first five-year diversity plan and made the decision that we were going to actively change the face of this organization. We had the first Chief of Diversity and Culture that we hired, and we're putting a team together. But we also, we weren't just doing things that were, you know, the perception of making change. We also made sure that Keisha, who's in this job, she has the tools and material to deliver what she has to deliver. She has the talent management department under her. Every job description and every posting now has to go through a different lens. So, we open up the organization to people that I was hearing didn't have an opportunity. You may have heard that the organization is about fifteen or sixteen percent women in the TTC. Out of almost sixteen thousand people, it's fifteen or sixteen percent women. That's not statistically possible, is what my many of my friends told me. So, we came up with some goals for ourselves. Four of every ten operators in 2021, and now in 2022, four of ten hired will be a woman at the TTC.

Providing operators opportunities, these are great entry level jobs, giving people opportunities. We've been making sure that we talked to the universities and the colleges now at the graduate timeframes. Making sure people are aware that the opportunities that come into public transit. It’s really important that our organization mirrors the people that we serve, and the people that take us. And you know, I'm hearing now, a little bit more and more, that us being that open, people are saying that they are comfortable letting their child come and take the TTC. We've done a lot of training of people. The concept of unconscious bias, a diversity bias; educating people about this, and being cognizant of how we behave, and how we act, and how we treat people. You know, if the more and more we can do that, and demonstrate to the city and those that live within the city that we are a welcoming organization, my hope is that more and more people take us. Because we do have that challenge and work from home, so we have to look at other markets now.

Anita Sharma
I think you've got a head start there. Because the number one thing people tell me living in the city, or being new to the city, is they do feel safe here. I don't want to be Pollyanna about it, but you know, we've been to New York, we've been to Boston, across the pond, wherever. A lot of folks say they love the city. They love everything that it has to offer, and they love—they're willing to pay the premium for safety. I was gonna say that's priceless, but there's a price on it; and you're talking about that. And you're working with your partners, right? Rick, that's so critical. Working with Brampton, working with Hamilton, working with Pickering, to get these kids. If you need the workers, there's—everybody here in this room will tell you, they have problems. I think it was a business development survey that you mentioned, where the number one issue was the lack of workplace accessibility. And when you have the pandemic, and you've got people who've now moved out to Beaverton or Innisfil—and it's full time, it's not just the cottage property anymore—there are going to be problems having them snake their way into the city, when and if they need to be here.

Richard Leary
One of the things that we do, our focus has been on neighbourhood improvement areas, for instance. Areas where we know people are looking for jobs. Making sure that they have access to coming to the TTC, and they’re local, we don't have to worry about those long commutes anymore. And just reaching out to people that are looking for work and welcoming them into the organization.

Anita Sharma
Okay.

Richard Leary
It's working.

Anita Sharma
Any final thoughts?

Richard Leary
No, I’m just—thank you very much for this opportunity. It was great to have the opportunity to sit down chat.

Anita Sharma
The pleasure’s all mine. Like I said, we all grew up with the TTC.

Richard Leary
Yeah. Come back to it please. It's fine.

Anita Sharma
We’re already there. Rick, thank you so much.

Richard Leary
My pleasure. It’s fun.

Anita Sharma
It's seriously been an incredible honour, Rick, to chat about the TTC. Like I said, the lifeblood, I think, of this amazing city of ours. That stated, I'm not the only one who's interested in asking you questions. So, with that, are you ready to take a few?

Richard Leary
Let's try it.

Anita Sharma
Okay, let's do it. Last year, the TTC spoke a lot about its commitment to diversity and inclusion, including having forty percent of new hires—you addressed this—being women. Where's the TTC at with this goal? Do you want to just quickly....

Richard Leary
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, this year at about a thousand people that will be in, we're at about thirty-six, thirty-seven percent. Last year, we had about five hundred people hired, and we hit sixty percent. So, we're really focusing on outreach. And we're gonna go up and down, and I said to everybody, it's okay, it's a goal. It's something we’re striving for, right? But we have to continue the outreach to make sure people know about these jobs, so that we achieve our goal. So, we're working on that.

Anita Sharma
Okay. And we also have another question—we did address it, but we can do a deep dive, if you like—with respect to concerns you may have about people that are still working from home, and not jumping back on public transit perhaps as soon as you thought they might, because you said you're at, what, seventy percent pre-pandemic capacity?

Richard Leary
At seventy percent now, yeah. And we always talked about putting service back when the pandemic was over, but now that new normal is having people work from home. I don't particularly love it. I came in almost ninety percent of the time, ninety-plus percent of the time, during the pandemic, because I like coming in the office. I don't—you know, it does work, we were very successful, people worked really hard at home. During the pandemic, we were having so many meetings. I actually had to have a meeting with people and say, I need people to take time off. I could see the stress in their faces...

Anita Sharma
Yeah.

Richard Leary
...I was talking to people on the phone. They were starting earlier because they didn't have to travel, they were working later because they didn't have to travel. And many times, we just, you know, it's okay to go shopping at noon time, get out of the house, right? Because we don't expect people to work that hard. It was putting a lot of personal pressure on people. That's why I'm still—even the work from home structure, I wonder long term if it's good for the person personally, or how it's gonna work out. It does work out though, you know, and I have bought into it. But I like having people in the office, personally. I think it's good for the community, right? And we'll see where it goes. I'm interested long term where people are going to do.

Anita Sharma
Well, we couldn't wrap up this conversation with what we thought would happen, which is a personal gripe about the delays. So, why not? This is so par for the course. There have been a number of delays recently, especially on the 506.

Richard Leary
Go figure, yeah.

Anita Sharma
Go figure. The 506. What is the TTC doing to fix this inconvenience? You talked about the ATC; you've talked about just all the improvements that you've had to make. And you've had to force closures because of that, right?

Richard Leary
Yeah, you know, this one here is particularly—I'm hearing a lot about this lately, just to be honest with you—you know, because this really...

Anita Sharma
Lot of nodding of the heads, yeah.

Richard Leary
Yeah, this is a lot. This is a lot about, you know, there's new travel patterns going around the city with vehicles, and we're trying to put more service back. But at the same time, you know, it’s construction season in the city of Toronto, right? We have a lot of track replacement work that has to be done if we're going to run the streetcars on those lines. So, you know, there's a balance here. And so, when I talked about how do we audible more than we did in the past, making sure buses are available, and we have extra streetcars available, that's what we're trying to do. We're also trying to message this to people as well. And we have to do a better job on that, I'll tell you, because that's what I'm hearing from our customers, ‘I wouldn't mind, but you didn't tell me.’ Right? So, we're looking more on social media, and how we communicate.

Anita Sharma
But like you said about the asbestos, when you actually tell people what it is you're up to...

Richard Leary
Exactly.

Anita Sharma
...they'll back off and have some empathy in terms of, they're seeing the end game

Richard Leary
Exactly. You know, you can always tell people it's going to be better. We have to give them a little bit more information going into January, right? When this work is done in the 506 area. There'll be the fluid movement of trains again, and the streetcars again, so they’ll be happy. It's just getting through that, it’s difficult. Old city, old infrastructure. You know, I'm just glad the money's there for the capital investment to improve it.

Anita Sharma
I’ve got to tell you; I started taking the subway recently again. And what I really liked about it is there's always someone there, there's always someone around, almost like an ambassador, a TTC ambassador, who can sort of help you if you're new to the system again. It's just comforting knowing that someone's there.

Richard Leary
We're really trying to make sure that all our employees understand the importance of their customer service. You know, it's that information, it's the security, the safety, the invisible. And we were pulling everybody out, as I said, the Station Transformation Program is making sure that they're there, and they’re visible, for that customer aspect of what we do. It's so important, right? You know, it's very difficult when you move around a city and you don't know how to get somewhere, or you can't figure out the wayfinding. Having someone there is important for us—at least for me, and my belief of that actual interaction—and we're trying to get more and more of that. We’re getting buy-in within the organization, which makes me even more happy; they buy it, and the understand it. Because everybody at the TTC, at the transit, wants to get people back in the subway, talking to the frontline people. Even I give my union a lot of credit. Their message is, let's do a good job to get people back on the system. And I give them a lot of credit.

Anita Sharma
Okay. On that note, we are getting the hook—thank you, Jehan—Rick, it's been an absolute pleasure. I hope some of your questions were answered today. And I think I speak on behalf of the whole crew here when I say best wishes with the TTC, because it is sort of like that member of our family. So, thank you, sir, for your time today.

Richard Leary
Thank you. I appreciate it. That’s great, thank you.

Concluding Remarks by Sal Rabbani
Thank you very much, Rick and Anita. That’s a critical piece, an inclusive economy, and we talked about that. And thank you for sharing your insights, Rick, on what you're up to these days at the TTC. I'd like to just take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for their support, and again, to Rick and Anita for joining us today in person, and for those of you joining in online.

As a club of record, all Empire Club of Canada events are available to watch and listen to on demand and on our website. The recording of this event will be available shortly, and everyone registered will receive a link with an email. Our next event is on Thursday, October the 6th. Join us for a panel discussion on the opportunities and challenges to accelerate industrial decarbonization in Canada. I'll be joined by an exciting group of leading industry voices from across the supply chain. On October 20th, join us in person at the Royal York as we host the Honourable Kinga Surma, Ontario's Minister of Infrastructure, to speak to the challenges faced locally and around the world regarding major projects and market shifts. Thanks again for joining us today. We invite you to stay and join us in the lobby for networking. Have a great afternoon. This meeting is now adjourned.