The TTC board has voted to appoint Rick Leary as the transit agency's permanent CEO.

As the Star reported Monday, the hiring panel struck to find the next chief executive unanimously endorsed Leary about two weeks ago. The Boston native has been serving as acting CEO since December, after Andy Byford left to take a job as president of the New York City Transit Authority.

Commissioners on the board voted to approve the hiring panel's recommendation at a closed-door meeting at city hall Tuesday morning, and then confirmed the appointment unanimously when they reconvened in public in the afternoon.

TTC employees in the room erupted into applause at the outcome of the vote.

Speaking to reporters before the meeting, TTC Chair Josh Colle said he would wait until Leary had signed his new contract before explaining why the board felt he was the standout candidate.

In an interview Monday, Colle, who was on the hiring panel, declined to discuss who was in line for the job, but described the appointment process as “really thorough.”

“The committee unanimously put forward a name from a long list of international candidates, and I think everyone’s really comfortable and pleased with who we’re going to put forward,” Colle said.

According to sources, while there were many initial applicants for the position, only Leary and one other candidate made the final round. The low Canadian dollar was believed to be a deterrent for some potential candidates from abroad.

The TTC had planned to announce its new chief executive next week, after the board had voted and a contract with the appointee had been finalized. It’s not clear how much the new CEO will be paid, but Byford earned a salary of $346,791.51, excluding benefits, in his final year at the helm.

According to sources, some members of the hiring committee felt Leary was best positioned to lead the agency in the coming years in part because its focus is shifting away from overseeing transit expansion, which is increasingly handled by Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency. The CEO will likely have to concentrate on managing existing service rather than building new lines.

Leary has been praised for improving TTC service while responsible for the agency’s day-to-day operations in the position of chief service officer, a job he held from 2014 until he became acting CEO.

One of his major accomplishments was a drastic reduction in the number of short turns on bus and streetcar routes. The practice of reversing vehicles’ direction mid-route in order to prevent bunching or gapping on the line was once a major complaint of riders, but under Leary’s watch, between 2014 and 2017 short turns on streetcar routes fell by 89 per cent, according to TTC stats.

On his way out the door, Byford endorsed Leary to take over his former job.

Prior to joining the TTC, Leary, 55, who is from Boston and now lives in Aurora, worked at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. He then crossed the border in 2009 to work as general manager of York Region Transit.

Although he technically has been serving in an interim capacity, Leary has played a hands-on role in running the TTC in the past six months, including unveiling a new ridership growth strategy and shaking up the agency’s management structure.

In an interview with the Star in January, Leary stressed he didn’t plan to be merely a placeholder until a permanent CEO was found.

“We put out almost 1,600 buses, seven- or eight hundred trains, a couple of hundred streetcars every day,” he said at the time. “I’m here to run the place.”

Leary will now be tasked with shepherding a handful of difficult projects toward completion, including managing the transition to the Presto fare card system, and grappling with the TTC’s continuously troubled $1-billion streetcar order from Bombardier.

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He’ll also be handed the politically fraught Scarborough subway file. The one-stop extension is currently estimated to cost $3.35 billion, but an updated projection scheduled to come before council next year is expected to reveal costs have risen.

Leary will also have to forge a relationship with a new provincial government whose transit plans threaten significant upheaval at the TTC.

During his successful election campaign, Premier Doug Ford proposed uploading ownership of Toronto’s subway system to the province. Ford has also promised additional stops on the Scarborough subway extension, which could delay the project and make it even more costly.