Drew Dilkens is pushing back on comments made by one of his opponents in the race for Mayor of Windsor.
On Thursday, Ward 4 councillor and mayoral candidate Chris Holt unveiled his plan for improvements in public transit in the city.
Holt outlined that he would increase transit funding, while contrasting his record on the file with the current Mayor.
Dilkens says during his time as Mayor the City of Windsor has come up with at least eight master plans, including on transit, and they've advanced every one of them in a material way.
He says they've added the 518X route, as well as service to Leamington, Kingsville, LaSalle, Amherstburg and Essex.
"We've made huge improvements, in fact in 2021 we added an additional $8-million to the base budget of transit. The facts are that this term of council we have made great improvements, but you need leadership. Leadership requires you to pivot when appropriate, and I can think of no more time when it's more appropriate than during a global pandemic and your ridership on the transit system is down more than 90 per cent," he said.
Dilkens says the pandemic years were not the time to put more money into the transit system when they were already behind $25-million dealing with the effects on tunnel and airport operations which are draining the system.
He says every single member of council put their hands up to support all of the master plans put in front of them, and that he remains committed to making all of the improvements identified a reality when the next term of council re-visits them.
"And we'll continue to make big improvements like we have on the Sewer Master Plan, the Parks Master Plan, the Housing and Homelessness Master Plan, the Transit Master Plan, and of course Windsor Works. We'll continue to do this, we're not taking our eye off the ball and we'll continue to make improvements throughout the entire city."
Dilkens says coming out of the worst of the pandemic they're already starting to see a bounce in ridership, especially now that kids are back at school and they've added the St. Clair College passes.
"We've brought in more revenue, and so we're seeing more ridership come back," Dilkens continued. "We're not at 100 per cent yet, but we're working our way back to 100% and there will be a right time to make these strategic investments that enhance services even further according to what we said we were going to do in the master plan."
Dilkens also added that the continued reliance on ArriveCan at the border is having a negative effect on transit, as the Tunnel Bus is one of the biggest financial drivers for that department.
He's hopeful that at the end of the month the federal government will reconsider the use of the app at the land border, which would be a big boost for transit and the City's bottom line more broadly.
Dilkens and Holt are part of a group of seven candidates running for mayor, along with Benjamin Danyluk, Aaron Day, Matthew Giancola, Ernie Lamont, and Louis Vaupotic.