Political flip-flops on transit will cost us the largest transit investment in 30 years. Statement from Tom Gill, Surrey First Mayoral Candidate
In less than four weeks, our city will decide the next four years. The choices and differences between candidates are becoming clearer every day, particularly when it comes to leadership and consistency on something as important as transit.
After 10 years of fighting hard for transit improvements and securing $1.65 billion in funding, we’re ready to go. The LRT rapid rail system is definitely the right system for connecting and building our growing neighbourhoods.
SkyTrain is terrific at connecting cities and major centres. But when it comes to connecting Surrey neighbourhoods and moving around our city, LRT works best.
Before they flip-flopped, both Doug McCallum and Bruce Hayne were solidly behind LRT for Surrey. Now they are ready to jeopardize our entire transit future with their inconsistency and political opportunism.
As far back as 2014, Doug McCallum was an LRT champion, and Bruce Hayne supported every LRT vote we ever had on council. Now, they want to jeopardize $1.65 billion in guaranteed funding and the thousands of jobs that go with it.
Political differences are one thing, but when you can’t count on someone to do the right thing for our city it hurts us all.
My support of LRT remains solid. More than 300 cities around the world have put LRT to work in their communities because it does the job.
Doug McCallum and Bruce Hayne want us to go back to the drawing board and spend another 10 years without the transit we need.