"But more often than not….there isn’t a bus available to send to you….even though you have paid one of the highest fares for your ride." McKenney says if elected mayor, they will invest in transit services, "that pick you up where you are and get you where you need to be … on time. Getting people onto transit and getting others out of traffic will mean investments in the service."
"It's frustrating that these ongoing issues with these trains continue. It really erodes trust in our public transit system," said Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney, a member of Ottawa's transit commission who led calls for the recent public inquiry into the Confederation Line.
City Councillor and mayoral candidate Catherine McKenney was also critical of the decision not to report testing failures during trial running. “It’s disappointing really, it means we’re not all given the information that we need to make the decisions on the behalf of residents.”
McKenney went big, putting on the table a motion that would activate a section of the Ontario Municipal Act that allows councils to request a judicial inquiry.
"Having it up and running is fantastic, but we must understand what went wrong. We have to know (as we are) building Phase 2, Line 2 with SNC Lavelin, that we are not making the same mistakes again."
"Call me naïve, but I really did not think that this was going to be the time for us to start governing by memo."
Coun. Catherine McKenney said they want answers about the calculations behind the decision to pull some 175 buses off the road.
"We have to go out and we have to consult with the real transit experts, and those are the transit users."
"There's absolutely no evidence that would support this decision for being positive for drivers, for any other type of commuter, for the investment we're making into transit. Quite the opposite. Time and time again, we've shown that inducing demand does that. You just get more cars on the road."