New York’s Next Subway Chief Will Mull Closing Lines for Repairs

TORONTO — The veteran transit executive from Toronto hired to run New York City’s subway said he was considering a series of aggressive steps to shore up the city’s faltering system, including shutting down lines for long periods of work with the goal of modernizing the system in years, not decades.

Andy Byford, the chief executive of the Toronto Transit Commission, also said he would scrutinize how the subway spends money and consider overhauling senior management, and suggested that congestion pricing — charging fees to drive into the most crowded parts of Manhattan as a way to raise money for transit — was a worthy idea.

But it is Mr. Byford’s openness to shutting down subway lines that is sure to attract attention, and condemnation, in a city where a 24-hour subway system is considered sacrosanct.

Mr. Byford stressed that real progress would require hard choices.

“The only way to do that is to get in the tunnels and do the work, and you cannot do that when trains are running, period,” Mr. Byford said in a wide-ranging interview between meetings during his waning days in Toronto. “If we’re really serious we have to bite the bullet and to a certain extent inconvenience people while we get the work done, but I will hold myself accountable to New Yorkers to say it will be worth the pain.”

Mr. Byford, 52, who arrives in New York next month, seems willing to ruffle feathers in taking on one of the world’s most difficult transportation jobs — overseeing a sprawling and antiquated system that has suffered years of political neglect and whose millions of riders have grown skeptical that new leadership will yield any real improvement.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who controls the subway, minced no words when he met with Mr. Byford after his final job interview — aging infrastructure, overcrowding, track and signal problems, limited funding and a critical public. “Are you up for that?” Mr. Cuomo asked.

To Mr. Byford the message was clear: “This is no place for wallflowers.’’

While Toronto’s system is far smaller, those seeking a guide to what Mr. Byford might do in New York can look to his playbook here — he shut down the subway on weekends to repair switches and tracks and lay the ground work for new signals. (In New York, officials already plan a 15-month shutdown of the tunnel that carries the L line between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and a shorter closing — five days — is scheduled this month for another tunnel that carries the E and the M lines between Queens and Manhattan.)

Mr. Byford also focused on quick wins like cleaning subways, renovating bathrooms, creating rider-friendly signage and pushing train operators to make announcements about delays. He also took on the transit union over contracting out garbage collection and other services and instituting one-person train operations.

The system he inherited was rife with problems familiar to New Yorkers — constant delays, poor maintenance, aging equipment and a dim public image.

“Fares went up and service did not improve, ticket monitors fell asleep in the booths, there were no announcements when the train stopped in the tunnel and you didn’t know if you were waiting five minutes or 20 minutes for a train,” said Karen Stintz, a former Toronto city councilor who served as chairwoman of the Toronto Transit Commission from 2010 to 2014.

In Mr. Byford’s first two weeks, a fare collector was shot during a robbery and Union Station, a busy hub, flooded. An apologetic Mr. Byford appeared often on television promising improvements. “Andy’s visible presence was the single biggest contributor to the public trusting again in the system,’’ Ms. Stintz said. “He recognized there was a branding challenge.”

Mr. Byford designed an ambitious five-year plan and was able to produce results on initiatives that had been in disarray, including a subway line extension and a new signaling system on one of Toronto’s four subway lines.

“Andy rode in on a white horse and rescued these projects,” said Steve Munro, a longtime Toronto Transit advocate. “He got to show ‘I’m in charge and we’re going to fix this.’”

The Toronto Transit Commission was named the 2017 Transit System of the Year by the American Public Transportation Association, citing the system for reducing delays and increasing customer satisfaction.

“He stopped the erosion of public confidence,” said Franz Hartmann, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance. “He was up against huge structural problems, a lack of funding and politicization on how to expand the T.T.C. Could he have done a better job? Maybe, but you can’t fault him for politicians not willing to spend the money that was required.”

Since 2014, train delays have decreased by six percent with the greatest decline — 18 percent — on the subway’s busiest and oldest train line, though complaints about delays rose last year, according to data from the Toronto Transit Commission.

Despite the many challenges, Mr. Byford considers becoming president of New York City Transit, which oversees the subway and public buses, a dream job. Any transit professional “worth his salt,” he said, wants to run one of the Big Three transit systems: New York, London or Hong Kong. And for him New York is the Holy Grail. And it is big — 5.7 million daily riders compared with 800,000 in Toronto.

On a recent Tuesday, Mr. Byford, clad in a charcoal suit and worn black leather shoes, sat in a makeup chair at a television studio, getting ready for one of three television appearances to discuss his new position.

“Hair and makeup?” quipped Mr. Byford, who is bald. The staffer chuckled and said, “Only makeup.”

Later, Mr. Byford, who was born in England, reflected on his career: “Who would have thought this spotty kid growing up in Plymouth would have ended up heading New York City Transit?”

It certainly was not his initial plan. After high school, Mr. Byford said he wanted to join the Royal Navy — Plymouth is home to a naval base and he recalled watching from his window during the Falklands War as battleships sailed out to sea.

But transit was in his blood. His grandfather was a bus driver for 40 years and his father worked for London Transport for 12 years.

Mr. Byford began his career as a station foreman with the London Underground, where he worked for 14 years and met his wife, Alison. (He proposed to her on a high-speed train in London.) Then he went to work for English railroads before moving to Australia to become second-in-command for the agency that runs public transit in Sydney.

In 2011, the Toronto Transit Commission tapped Mr. Byford to become the system’s No. 2 official, and he ended up ascending to the top post after the mayor at the time, Rob Ford, ousted Mr. Byford’s predecessor.

“During our time in Toronto it was a very volatile political environment,” Ms. Stintz said.

Mr. Byford says he is not afraid to speak up to politicians and tell them what needs to be done to better serve riders.

But a long-running battle over a transit plan here raised questions about how Mr. Byford will handle New York’s bruising political arena. Mr. Byford was accused, though ultimately cleared by a public auditor, of complaints that the transit agency at the mayor’s behest had massaged information comparing the costs of a subway extension to a light rail line.

“The question for New Yorkers will be can he — within a highly charged and politicized environment where there are competing visions and interests — speak truth to power or will he capitulate to pressure that will come from every side?” said Josh Matlow, a Toronto city councilor.

Mr. Byford said he had always tried to “give the right advice” and would do so in New York.

He will walk into an immediate minefield with Mr. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio feuding over subway financing. The mayor has refused the governor’s demand that the city pay half the cost of an $836 million emergency plan to stabilize the system. They are also at odds over long-term funding. Mr. Cuomo supports a congestion pricing plan, but Mr. de Blasio opposes the idea, saying it would burden low-income New Yorkers. Mr. Byford said congestion pricing was “a debate that needs to happen.”

He also said he would quickly assess the capability of the senior team and ensure funds “are being spent on the right things.”

“I want to make sure that people are crystal clear that the status quo is not good enough and that everyone has got to up their game,” he said, adding that riders should expect to see “tangible improvements within a year.”

Mr. Byford is a familiar face among Toronto subway commuters, many of whom stopped to wish him well. He has never owned a car. He promises to commute by subway in New York, adding that he and his wife are looking for an apartment in Manhattan.

Mr. Byford has been asked, more than once, if he is sure he is making the right move. After all, he has had “a pretty good run,” he said.

“There is a danger that I don’t succeed,” he said. “I know it will be very hard. I probably won’t have a life, I probably won’t see my wife, but I will be incredibly proud to be walking about that system and doing my damnedest to turn it around.”