As I wrote earlier today, we found out this morning that our CEO Tom Prendergast will be leaving TransLink to head the New York City Transit Authority. We held a press conference today where Tom talked to the media about his decision to leave, and here’s some audio and video from that conference.

First, here’s an MP3 with the full audio from the full conference. It’s about 20 minutes long and 9MB in size.

The video above captures the Q&A section of the conference. (Tom’s in front, and Ian Jarvis, our interim CEO is the dark haired guy on his left. Our board chair Dale Parker is in between them.)

In the clip, Tom answers questions from the media about his decision to go to New York. He reflects on the work he’s done here, and emphasizes that he’s leaving because the New York job is an amazing opportunity. He also doesn’t think his decision to leave should cast TransLink in a negative light. A quote:

Question: Do you think your leaving might send a negative signal about TransLink’s situation right now?

I don’t think it should. I mean, at the end of the day, the reason’s pretty clear. I’m going to work at the largest transit system in North America. And it’s one that I’ve worked at before and has some very very interesting, very very significant technical challenges. I believe we’ve stimulated dialogue here and we’ve got that momentum that I mentioned in the previous question, and there’s a will to get things done. So I don’t think people should look at this in any way shape or form in a negative way. Look at it in a transition and moving forward. That’s just the way I am in life. It’s much more optimistic to look forward and how we can take things to the next level, rather than look back with regrets.