ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[trainspotter139]

It has been true for most of the previous ION Vehicle updates that they were not on the media release agenda until the morning of the meeting. It has been that way because the local media has, with every vehicle progress report, spun the contents in a negative light. Better to release it the day of than let it percolate in the media cycle for the Friday - Tuesday period. As for the contents, I don't expect any delays. We have 6 (soon to be 7-9) vehicles with equipment installed here, once 511 is done debugging the systems it's full steam ahead with equipment testing and everything will start falling into place quite rapidly. 505, 507 & 509 have been doing operator training (in both daylight and nighttime conditions) and simulated burn-in testing for the past couple of weeks as well in preparation for the ramp-up of testing. 

As for Ford, he has no place being at the opening. His government had no role in funding ION and him being there would be another classic case of the government of the day taking credit for the hard work of a previous government.

So its better to not give citizens the few days to review the report and give feedback to their government representatives? You sound like you support the strategy of not giving people information in a timely manner.

Unfortunately there aren't enough people outside of this bubble that care enough to read reports to council and instead rely on the media coverage of council reports which on the LRT tend to be negatively biased.