Eighteen months into the job, Howard Collins is clear-eyed about the slog ahead. Fixing Sydney rail will take billions of dollars and five to 10 years, he says.
CHARIS PERKINS, Australian Financial Review, 1st November 2014
Howard Collins “the Tube man”, as London mayor Boris Johnson called him, counts himself a lucky man. After 35 years with London Transport, he is delighted to wake up each morning in his house overlooking the sea in the south Sydney suburb of Woolooware – bought in blithe defiance of the city’s postcode snobbery – and catch an early train to Central.
And neither union battles, nor early criticism of his $500,000-plus salary, nor the gargantuan challenge of dragging Sydney’s antiquated railways into the 21st century can spoil his enthusiasm. At that stage in a solid career, when some might begin ticking off the years to retirement, the chief executive of Sydney Trains is a man invigorated by a new adventure.