ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

Probably just hasn't been installed yet would be my guess.

[KevinL]

Messenger wire is strung along Charles! From Benton to well beyond Gaukel (I'm not sure quite how far).

Work is under way at Queen/Charles but not on the sidewalk on the corner just yet. A large hole has been cut from the asphalt in the main part of the intersection.

Queen station is getting attention, too - looks like they're prepping the platform for the edge treatment.

[Canard]

There is also a massive amount of dug-up concrete at the South end of the Kitchener Market station. I was driving by so couldn't take a photo, but it was... surprising... to see just how much had been dug up.

[KevinL]

Someone on Reddit was complaining about that work (they live nearby and the jackhammering really set them off).

[Markster]

Speaking of Market Station

Looks like there's going to be a mural painted on the massive concrete retaining wall!

   

[Bob_McBob]

Someone on Reddit was complaining about that work (they live nearby and the jackhammering really set them off).

Ahh yes, the dude who pegs the cost at $2m and believes Grandlinq will not be paying, and it will instead be hidden from the public in various regional department budgets 

[kidgibnick]

Does a mural really need to cost $2-million? What about rallying for a KW-artists (like Jeff Blackburn + others) to work on this piece? Surely we could organize this at a minimal cost for taxpayers! Just one example: http://www.framesonthefridge.com/murals/

[tomh009]

It will not cost $2M.

[KevinL]

The $2m was not about the mural, it was about the repair work GrandLinq is doing (the Reddit poster I mentioned seems to have a flair for hyperbole).

[trainspotter139]

The $2m was not about the mural, it was about the repair work GrandLinq is doing (the Reddit poster I mentioned seems to have a flair for hyperbole).

the same could be say for a large portion of the Reddit community as a whole *shrugs*

[Bob_McBob]

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7288...-near-lrt/

Is it my imagination or does this only conceivably affect a handful of businesses along the entire route? I see this little section on Duke St and maybe the short section on King St in Uptown Waterloo. What are the actual by-laws for patios on public property? All I can find are road setback rules.

[ijmorlan]

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7288...-near-lrt/

Is it my imagination or does this only conceivably affect a handful of businesses along the entire route? I see this little section on Duke St and maybe the short section on King St in Uptown Waterloo. What are the actual by-laws for patios on public property? All I can find are road setback rules.

This seems a bit weird. The article makes it sound like, once again, paranoia and over-caution is the order of the day. It mentions something about patio structures including metal elements which could be used to reach up to the power supply wires. Well, if somebody is dumb enough to disassemble patio structures, put them together to make a long pole, and reach up and touch the power supply wire, then they were going to kill themselves by some other accidental means at some point and it’s really not reasonably the responsibility of the Region to ensure that they don’t do it on their OCS. There has to be some personal responsibility at some point.

On the other hand, if the actual concern is more like “make sure tall patio stuff doesn’t fall onto the right-of-way or lean over and touch the OCS or blow up into the wires” then that could be a perfectly reasonable thing to be concerned about. However, even in this situation, it should be possible to work it out with individual restaurant operators for this summer.

Another weird thing is the mention of deliveries. Do these addresses now have no proper delivery point? By which I mean a place where a delivery truck can briefly park more or less right next to the business. In general I’m not sympathetic to claims that reducing parking is a problem, but businesses really do depend on delivery trucks being able to make their deliveries conveniently.

[clasher]

Before the LRT duke had enough room for a truck to stop and unload without blocking traffic since there were left turn lanes for Queen and Frederick that people used to get around a parked truck. There was also parking on both sides of the street so the food delivery people used to pull up and dash in to pick up the deliveries.

I agree the paranoia about someone lashing metal poles together to poke the high-voltage lines seems pretty far-fetched. Maybe just a simple rule to say umbrellas should be made out of wood or plastic instead of metal? Even then I gotta wonder... it doesn't seem like patio furniture is blowing into car traffic or people are sticking umbrellas into all the other hydro lines running around.

[mpd618]

However, even in this situation, it should be possible to work it out with individual restaurant operators for this summer.

The article says they did work it out for this year, but they don't want to buy patio furniture that would only meet requirements for this year.

Another weird thing is the mention of deliveries. Do these addresses now have no proper delivery point? By which I mean a place where a delivery truck can briefly park more or less right next to the business. In general I’m not sympathetic to claims that reducing parking is a problem, but businesses really do depend on delivery trucks being able to make their deliveries conveniently.

Our cities generally have very few laneways and seem to have assumed that curbside space is ubiquitous. Now that streets are sometimes being used for other purposes and street parking is often quite full anyway, it turns out there isn't really much of a strategy for loading and delivery.

This property possibly never had a "proper delivery point".

[Canard]

~2:30 or so: