Ward 15-Kitchissippi

Katherine Hobbs – Would I vote in favour of the current transit plan? Yes Why? Ottawa deserves a world class transportation system. Building one takes careful attention to the transportation needs of current and future neighbourhoods, as well as environmental needs. Ottawa can no longer accommodate the transportation needs of its citizens on buses, and therefore we need to move to a light rail system and alleviate the bottlenecks in the downtown with a tunnel. And buses are noisy and emit fumes that are bad for us and our environment, while trains are quiet. The Tunnel: Cost $785M. Surface Rail in Downtown: $400M Not building a tunnel downtown will end up costing taxpayers dearly down the road. As soon as a surface route would be completed in the downtown core, we would be out of capacity and need to build a tunnel. As a taxpayer I expect City Council to make wise and prudent choices that will provide citizens with the required transportation needed today and ten years down the road. A tunnel will do us for 100 years. Why would we waste $400 million now on surface rail, just to turn around and spend maybe triple that in 10 years to build the tunnel. The current LRT plan at 2.1 billion is the largest economic capital project in Ottawa’s history. After the contributions of the province (600 million) and the federal government (600 million) we are left with 475M coming from development fees, and 350M from gas taxes that must be used towards transportation infrastructure. The remaining $75M is what taxpayers are paying now for transportation on their taxes. That tax amount won’t change. So the net increase to the taxpayer is ZERO. Plus there will be a savings of $100M a year from LRT versus buses that can be turned back in for further rail lines in the City. So definitely yes, the current transit plan will improve the quality of life for the citizens of Ottawa and I support that.

Christine Leadman – Did not respond

Daniel Stringer – Did not respond