Air and rail travel on the minds of business community at inaugural Mayor's Breakfast

Bryan Paterson took questions at the event hosted by the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce.

Planes, trains, and automobiles is what many in Kingston's business community seemed to want to talk about with the Mayor over coffee and eggs.

The Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce held their first-ever Mayor's Breakfast at the Quality Inn and Conference Centre on Thursday.

The highlight of the morning was a question and answer session with Mayor Bryan Paterson. There were a number of topics raised from housing to tourism to mental health services.

But the one area that pretty much took up most of the discussion was transportation. Particularly, the possible return of air travel out of Norman Rogers Airport (YGK) and high-speed passenger rail.

Paterson says it is important that people going in and out of Kingston have a number of reliable transportation options.

During the Q&A session, Paterson told the 200 in attendance that he was having a tough time getting through to those in charge of VIA Rail about their plans to add a high-speed rail service. He says those plans don't include Kingston as a stop between Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

Paterson says he is only one voice in this conversation and wants others to join him in imploring VIA, Air Canada, and others in the transportation industry to include Kingston in their plans.

The Mayor's Breakfast was an opportunity to bring together members of Kingston's business community in one room.

Paterson says it was great to hear what they had to say.

Paterson says this event allowed him to get a read of what's on the mind of residents.

Story by Ken Hashizume