ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[timc]

A lot of "let's save costs by avoiding these areas" (Hespeler/Eagle) followed by "let's add in many other stops, including some egregiously expensive ones." (Preston)

I didn't see "let's save costs" in there. It was more like "nobody lives on Hespeler, so why should the LRT go there?" and "keep the BRT on Hespeler and run the LRT through Preston".

I wonder what percentage of the respondents were from Preston.

[Canard]

I'm from Kitchener, and both my husband and I left our input with the Preston route.  If your primary objective is moving people, that's a no brainer. Every time we drive through Preston, I think about how European it would feel with a tram running down the centre of it, picking up and dropping off people. They could really use the uplift.

However, the primary objective, sadly, is not moving people - the primary objective is development.  So the region told the RT team they're not allowed to touch the 24 alignment; it absolutely must go down 24/Hespeler road.  How it enters at Pinebush and exits at Delta is up for debate, but that's 100% set-in-stone.

A shame, really.

[MidTowner]

There’s no one to advocate for the 24 routing because nobody does live there. It’s true that development seems to be at least as big a part of the goal as ridership. Moving people in the future, rather than moving people today.

I can see this, actually. The ridership on the 200 between south Kitchener and Cambridge probably doesn’t justify LRT: frequent bus service would be able to serve those riders. But, if we need to extend Ion to Cambridge (and we do), we might as well leverage an LRT’s ability to spur development. The place where that can happen is along Hespeler.

[Viewfromthe42]

A lot of "let's save costs by avoiding these areas" (Hespeler/Eagle) followed by "let's add in many other stops, including some egregiously expensive ones." (Preston)

I didn't see "let's save costs" in there. It was more like "nobody lives on Hespeler, so why should the LRT go there?" and "keep the BRT on Hespeler and run the LRT through Preston".

I wonder what percentage of the respondents were from Preston.

"Minimize conflicts with CP and grade separation" speaks to going to the Hespeler/Eagle intersection. You have to cross rail twice just to hit that intersection, very costly.

The discussion I heard when attending, regarding Preston, was the desire for a stop right before the line heads East on Eagle. Putting a stop there, with the grade and curve and waterway issues, would be the most expensive stop on the entire line, even beyond the grade separation at King and Victoria, according to the professionals in attendance. Those same residents were also very unmoved by being able to walk to alternate stops, proposed or possible, in relatively similar timelines, with the goal of not having an egregiously expensive stop, and equally against seeing European-style development by following King down through to the Delta.

It's because we have no one living on Hespeler that we can dream about turning a completely auto-dominated landscape of massive scale into a place oriented away from its main current purpose. I advocated for keeping LRT in as straight an alignment as possible down King/Coronation, and turning the aBRT into full on BRT with at least its own paint if not physically separated lanes on Hespeler, giving an east Cambridge option which would go north to the future development at Speedsville and Maple Grove, hooking west to sportsworld.

[ijmorlan]

I have long thought that they should have started a mini service with just a single vehicle shuttling back and forth between UW campus and Uptown on a single track. I think that would have cut the legs out from under a lot of the nonsense that was spewed about LRT — there can still be differences of opinion, some of them even legitimate, but a lot of the outright incorrect facts wouldn’t have been tenable. Of course I’m aware the overhead costs for a single-vehicle service are rather large.

That routing, in particular, would be extremely student-heavy (I know our entire transit system is). Almost no non-students would ride it, and the LRT naysayers would quickly label it a "student shuttle" and, no matter how successful it would be, they would claim that people who can afford to buy cars just won't take transit.

That’s actually a very good point I hadn’t considered. I guess the whole discussion is moot now that a full system is under construction, but you’re right that the ridership demographic of my pilot project idea would have been a political challenge. It would still show people how LRT really works physically, but it wouldn’t give the right idea of how it would fit into the city.

[GtwoK]

Seems like Erb is undergoing some night utility work because of extensive lane closures. Anyone know if the right turn segment / island from Caroline onto Erb Westbound is being included with Ion construction, or is that part of the Bridgeport / Erb / Albert rework in a few years?

[Markster]

Seems like Erb is undergoing some night utility work because of extensive lane closures. Anyone know if the right turn segment / island from Caroline onto Erb Westbound is being included with Ion construction, or is that part of the Bridgeport / Erb / Albert rework in a few years?

That's part of ION.
The Bridgeport / Erb / Albert rework was specifically ordered to accommodate the intersection design received from the Rapid Transit team.

[Lens]

The Fairview Park station area is now fenced off and some digging has started again on the hydro corridor.

[KevinL]

The Fairview Park station area is now fenced off and some digging has started again on the hydro corridor.

Notably, the trees that stood next to Wilson Avenue have been recently felled. I would not be surprised to see excavation begin soon.

[Markster]

Gaukel at Charles is open again, and buses are using it.

The embedded track is now laid across Ontario St, but just the first concrete pour. They still need to lay the concrete on either side of the tracks. Ontario might be open again in a week or so.

Queen St seems to be having continual work, as I'm seeing trenches appear and disappear each time I go past. Really wonder how much longer it's going to take. If all the other on-street stations are indicative, they'll pour the Queen Station platform before they lay rail, so I suppose Queen St still has a couple months of closure to go.

[Canard]

Yeah, the pit at Queen and Charles is unreal! I wonder if they "found something" there that caused a hiccup, or if there really was just that much work to be done there, and it's on-track.

[KevinL]

I understand that area is a particularly important point in the water main system, so that may well be the source of the time delay.

[GtwoK]

Queen is still somehow scheduled to reopen in 2 weeks, surprisingly.

[Canard]

Hmm, that suggests they were/are hoping that trackwork will be complete there as well. Otherwise they were assuming it would open to traffic only to close again right after for trackwork. So that suggests they are really behind, because a crossing with embedded track has historically taken 2-4 weeks in other locations.

[Canard]

Fences are down on the Southbound side of the Cedar/Kitchener Market stop - I assume this is in preparation for pulling the rails stored there. Rebar mats are in place between there and Benton, along with the idler rollers they place on the ground to ease rail pulling.