For immediate Release:
September 29, 2014
(Ottawa): In response to today’s announcement that, if elected, Mayoral candidate Mike Maguire would scrap Phase Two of Light Rail in the City of Ottawa in exchange for an alternative and as yet unstudied plan, Ecology Ottawa’s Executive Director, Graham Saul, said:
“If this is a joke, it’s not funny. Why throw years of planning, thousands of hours of public consultation and millions of dollars in assessments out the window in exchange for a plan that is so full of unanswered questions that it might never happen? The next city council needs to focus on how to make our existing plans even better and this proposal would set us back five years and send us all back to the drawing board.
“The City of Ottawa’s current plan is ambitious but it doesn’t go far enough, so instead of tearing it down we should be focusing on how to make it even more exciting. There are some elements in Mike Maguire’s proposal that could be used to expand on the existing plans, but taking the hatchet to key locations like Place D’Orleans doesn’t make any sense.
“At first glance it looks like Mike Maguire is proposing to drive a train through a number of sensitive environmental areas. We need to look at this more closely in order to better understand the implications.”
For more information, contact: Graham Saul Executive Director Ecology Ottawa Cell: 613-710-2819
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