Pete Tomlin is an expert in transit signalling systems, who was employed by the

Toronto Transit Commission The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the primary public transport agency in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, operating the majority of the city's transit bus, bus and rail services. It is the oldest and largest of the urban transit service providers ...

, the

New York City Transit Authority The New York City Transit Authority (also known as NYCTA, the TA, or simply Transit, and branded as MTA New York City Transit) is a New York state public-benefit corporations, public-benefit corporation in the U.S. state of New York (state), New ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

Signalling systems

Tomlin was responsible for installing the signal system on London's

Jubilee line The Jubilee line is a London Underground line that runs between in suburban north-west London and in east London, via the West End of London, West End, South Bank and London Docklands, Docklands. Opened in 1979, it is the newest line on the ...

, in 1997, and the

West Rail The West Rail line () was a commuter rail / rapid transit line that formed part of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system in Hong Kong until 27 June 2021. Coloured magenta on the MTR map, the line ran from Tuen Mun station, Tuen Mun to Hun ...

and Ma On Shan subway lines in

, before coming to Toronto to upgrade the signal system on the Yonge-University Line. The New York City Transit President

Andy Byford Andrew Byford (born 1965) is a British transport executive who has held several management-level positions in transport authorities around the world, such as the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Autho ...

hired Tomlin in January 2019, having worked with him in London and Toronto. Byford described his hiring of Tomlin as a "coup", because multiple other systems had wanted to hire him. Tomlin was hired during the middle of a hiring freeze. According to the ''

New York Daily News The ''Daily News'' is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson in New York City as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in Tabloid (newspaper format ...

,'' it was his expertise in upgrading the signal infrastructure subways use that put him in demand. Many major cities share the problem of their most used lines approaching or occasionally exceeding their maximum passenger carrying capacity. Improving the signals system allows trains to run closer together and more frequently, increasing a subway line's passenger capacity. It can postpone the need for new parallel lines to be installed. In describing the challenge of gradually replacing a subway line's signals system, while it is still in use, Tomlin said “A colleague of mine once described it like … conducting open-heart surgery on a 100-year-old person while he’s eating his lunch.” Byford repeatedly clashed with

Governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

Andrew Cuomo Andrew Mark Cuomo ( , ; born December 6, 1957) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 until his resignation in 2021. A member of the Democratic Party and son of former governor Mario Cuomo, ...

, and resigned on January 15, 2020. Tomlin resigned nine days later, on January 24, 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomlin, Pete Electrical engineers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people