New NYC Subway Chief Demands Reports Free Of 'Gobbledygook'

NEW YORK, NY — The subway system's new overseer won't tolerate anyone cooking the books. Andy Byford, the newly minted president of New York City Transit, said Thursday he wants his staff to provide "transparent" data on the root causes of subway delays.

A New York Daily News investigation published this week found MTA officials ticked up the number of "power-related" delays last summer to blame Con Edison for problems on the rails.

Power issues actually caused around 8,000 delays, but MTA staff counted any problem related to electricity — including times when power was intentionally turned off — so Gov. Andrew Cuomo could say the number was around 32,000 at an August press conference, the Daily News reported.

Asked about the report Thursday on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show," Byford said he wants numbers that show the real causes of delays so the MTA can fix them, not manipulated figures that fit a narrative..

"I expect my people to give absolutely transparent data, and there should be no gobbledygook around that," Byford said. "If we don’t understand the data then there’s a problem. I’m determined that we be transparent in my tenure and that we use data to drive improvement."

Byford started last week at the helm of the MTA branch that runs the subways, buses, paratransit service and Staten Island Railway. He came from Toronto, where he was credited with turning around that city's train system, to help do the same for New York's struggling subways.

Byford said he also expects MTA staff to communicate better with customers. He wants the agency to start using "plain English" to explain why trains are running behind. Byford brought the practice of avoiding jargon to Toronto from London, where he started his career.

Byford said his staffers in Toronto used to say, "Due to a power-off incident, service is delayed between X and Y" when a person jumping on the tracks had actually suspended service and forced workers to turn the power off.

MTA staff similarly counted incidents when a person jumped on the tracks and caused a power shutoff as "power-related" delays that they blamed on Con Ed last summer, the Daily News reported.

"I want you to talk as though you’re speaking to your granny in explaining what’s going on," Byford said. "It may take a little while. It’s certainly something I believe in — we should talk like human beings."

MTA Chairman Joe Lhota has denied that his staffers manipulated the data on power-related delays. Cuomo wanted the agency to paint a broad picture of "all power-related issues that have anything to do with a delay ... and a service disruption."

"What they were asked to do was to look at each one of the buckets and put them in a place where any time there was anything electrical or power-related," Lhota said after Wednesday's MTA Board meeting.

(Lead image: New York City Transit President Andy Byford. Photo courtesy of Toronto Transit Commission)