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TransLink interim CEO Doug Allen focused on 'finding efficiencies'

Compass Card and fare gate system also priorities

Doug Allen repeatedly uses the word “complicated” to describe work he found interesting during his long career in government.

So he may have landed in the right place as interim CEO of TransLink, a post he adopted on the eve of a contentious transit funding plebiscite. He will hold the job for the next six months.

“TransLink is a very interesting organization,” said Allen during an interview at the organization’s head office in New Westminster. “I just hope that by the time six months is up, we’re not only a better organization but people understand how well TransLink has performed in the past.”

Allen, 66, has been involved with or in charge of several big changes to the way government entities operate. In the early 1990s, he was deputy minister of health during the regionalization of the system; in 2002, he was appointed interim president of BC Ferries as it restructured to a semi-private model.

As a management consultant, he moved both the BC Safety Authority and the Land Title and Survey Authority out of government to become private authorities.

As a management consultant, he moved both the BC Safety Authority and the Land Title and Survey Authority out of government to become private authorities.

For the past three years, he’s been CEO of InTransit BC, the private corporation that runs the Canada Line and has a contract to sell its services to TransLink.

Allen’s appointment follows TransLink’s board’s decision to oust its previous CEO, Ian Jarvis, in February. 

Allen, who emphasized that he commutes to work every day by bus and SkyTrain, said his focus will be on running TransLink, “finding efficiencies” and making sure major projects are on task. 

Those major projects include carrying out 20 recommendations to upgrade and improve SkyTrain following two system failures last summer. Those upgrades will cost $71 million. 

The long-delayed Compass Card and fare gate system is also top of mind, Allen said.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time getting briefed on exactly where it stands, what the issues are and how we can be successful at every stage of rollout of that program,” he said.

He also plans to turn his attention to customer service and to improving communication between TransLink, the media and the public.

Allen said he will draw on his experience with the Canada Line to emphasize seemingly simple things, like smoothly running escalators and elevators and improved signage.

“There isn’t any substitute for speaking to customers about not only how we’re doing but things we’re proposing to change or things they think we should be changing,” he said. “There’s a customer interface here that needs special attention.”

Although he has a wealth of experience transforming public entities into private or semi-private ones, Allen’s mandate at TransLink does not include exploring privatization. But he said he believes private or hybrid entities are often more accountable.

“Every one of these entities that are purely private or a hybrid, the focus is on performance measurement, and that has tremendous pluses in my mind,” Allen said.

Finally, Allen will also be responsible, with the board, for finding a new CEO. 

That’s where it gets tricky, said Gordon Price, a former Vancouver city councillor and director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, because of the competing political interests at play.

Read the full profile on Doug Allen in our sister publication Business in Vancouver in here.

jstdenis@biv.com