ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ac3r]

I believe that the highest frequency will be 8 minutes based on the design and the fact that its not fully traffic segregated. Additional capacity past that point will be achieved with double length trains.

Thanks! Looking through that document, it does actually say 7. For 2021-2024 it says 7.5 minutes peak headway for 2021-2024 although that obviously didn't turn out to be true. It'd be nice to have more frequent trains already. It's particularly annoying waiting around when it's raining or in the winter, especially because the platforms aren't entirely sheltered against the elements. They have a "roof", but no sides and the only enclosure are those bus shelter sized things...plus they only installed heating in like 1 or 2 of them.

Looks like they'll be anticipating running two trains by 2025, although with the way the Region of Waterloo operates that might not happen so soon. I really hope they do add more, however, because the train is always usually standing room only during rush hour.

[Bytor]

I might be forgetting, but does anyone know if the original schedule for the LRT was supposed to be 5 minutes during the day, 7 at night? And if so, why did they change it to 10 and 15? I can't remember if it originally ran that schedule and they changed it due to lower ridership when the pandemic started

No, it was never that low. The baseline service plan from the project agreement back in 2014 only had 8 minute headways on peak, 10 minutes during the day, and 15-30 minutes in the early morning and at night in the fall, winter and spring. The summer schedule was 10 minutes 7:30am to 7pm and 15-30 minutes the other times. All for weekdays. Saturdays and Sundays all year long with 15 during the day, 30 at night.

In 2025 they were expecting to have between one and three double-linked trams from 5:30am to 10:30am and 2pm until midnight and 7 minute headways from 7:30am to 8:30am and 3:30pm to 6:30pm.

However, that was in a 2014 world where they were expecting things to be in service in fall 2017 and no pandemic.

I do not recall, off the top of my head, if there ever was more than a perfunctory statement about the 10/15 headways we actually saw once service finally started, and certainly no explanation.

Frankly, given the Region's known hostility to pedestrian and cycle traffic in engineering designs of intersections, bike lanes and crosswalks, plus an unwillingness to do the necessary and obvious things to grow bus ridership, and combine that with sever ION operation head-scratchers, like why does the LRT have to pull away from Queen Station only to stop and wait for the light to change instead of having the light change synchronised to it can just leave and go through right away, I don't see the Region setting shorter headways even If and when stage 2 is built.

[Bytor]

That's public private partnership for you.  They probably can suspend service if whether conditions aren't favourable so why would they bother making an effort to keep running.

No, they cannot. The agreement precludes them from doing that. They can only suspend service if the Region tells them to. There are penalties if they do not meet minimum service levels.

[tomh009]

In 2025 they were expecting to have between one and three double-linked trams from 5:30am to 10:30am and 2pm until midnight and 7 minute headways from 7:30am to 8:30am and 3:30pm to 6:30pm.

However, that was in a 2014 world where they were expecting things to be in service in fall 2017 and no pandemic.

This. We have only had roughly a year of "normal" service so far, so arguably 2029 is the new 2024.

[ac3r]

Frankly, given the Region's known hostility to pedestrian and cycle traffic in engineering designs of intersections, bike lanes and crosswalks, plus an unwillingness to do the necessary and obvious things to grow bus ridership, and combine that with sever ION operation head-scratchers, like why does the LRT have to pull away from Queen Station only to stop and wait for the light to change instead of having the light change synchronised to it can just leave and go through right away, I don't see the Region setting shorter headways even If and when stage 2 is built.

Yeah that drives me crazy. It does it in a few other places as well at times. This morning I was going northbound and as we pulled out of Frederick Station, we moved for about 3 seconds then stopped while the traffic moving on Weber went by. I believe it happens around Borden Station as well (though I'm not sure if this is all the time, I don't pay enough attention), both north and southbound. That a rapid transit system serving 630k people legitimately has to stop at red lights and does not have true signal priority that can let it roll through intersections without delay is ridiculous.

[Lens]

The system has not been optimized even 3 years later. It absolutely CRAWLS between Mill and Fairway stations for no apparent reason. They STILL don't have a signal installed at the crossing that took years to get built. Crosswalks leading to stations still have beg buttons that have to be pressed to cross and those crosswalks are often blocked with snow and ice in the winter. Stations still have not had any improvements to their access except the least busy station at the RT Park.

The only thing they have improved is the payment system at the vending machines and they likely only did that because they were losing a lot of revenue from down time and them freezing. That being said I still love our little budget LRT 

[ijmorlan]

Yeah that drives me crazy. It does it in a few other places as well at times. This morning I was going northbound and as we pulled out of Frederick Station, we moved for about 3 seconds then stopped while the traffic moving on Weber went by. I believe it happens around Borden Station as well (though I'm not sure if this is all the time, I don't pay enough attention), both north and southbound. That a rapid transit system serving 630k people legitimately has to stop at red lights and does not have true signal priority that can let it roll through intersections without delay is ridiculous.

King St. northbound at Allen also. Northbound road traffic typically (always?) gets the green before the LRT gets its signal, even if the LRT has completed its station stop.

Also, and this doesn’t currently affect LRT operations, but the excessive time during which certain crossing signals are activated is a reason or excuse not to increase frequency. I don’t see any reason why the system can’t operate on 5 minute headways, except that a few places like the corner of Erb and Caroline would not function under current safety paranoia operational practices. With improvements in crucial locations it should be able to run at even higher frequencies. After all, it’s not a problem for a road carrying many vehicles every minute to cross another road; so it shouldn’t be a problem for an LRT line carrying, say, just one vehicle every minute to cross a road.

[Bob_McBob]

Erb and Caroline featured in /r/IdiotsInCars today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/co...s_are_for/

[ac3r]

Someone on Reddit made this interesting fantasy LRT map. I wish we had transit this extensive.

[jamincan]

I didn't notice the first time I saw it, but the fanciful line names made me laugh - I can just imagine the pedantic transit nerd trying to correct everyone that no, they're not on the Blue Line, they're on the *Sapphire* Line.

[nms]

I like the ambition! I counted 71 new stations (not including existing ones that might be expanded in this scenario). Omitting the additional kilometres between stations, this works out to between 2 and 3 new stations added each year over a 30 year period. Are there transit systems in the world that add this kind of incremental capacity, a few kilometers (or stops) each year, or does it require a heavy construction phase of 5-7 years (after design is complete) which adds one new line, or at least a longer extension, at a time?

I note that the Crimson Line as drawn here has approximately the same number of stops as the TTC's forthcoming Eglinton Crosstown line which is partway through it's 12th year of active construction.

[ijmorlan]

I like the ambition!  I counted 71 new stations (not including existing ones that might be expanded in this scenario).  Omitting the additional kilometres between stations, this works out to between 2 and 3 new stations added each year over a 30 year period.  Are there transit systems in the world that add this kind of incremental capacity, a few kilometers (or stops) each year, or does it require a heavy construction phase of 5-7 years (after design is complete) which adds one new line, or at least a longer extension, at a time?

I note that the Crimson Line as drawn here has approximately the same number of stops as the TTC's forthcoming Eglinton Crosstown line which is partway through it's 12th year of active construction.

Don’t forget the Crosstown has a long tunnelled section which took years before actual rail construction could actually begin. Surface LRT should be much faster.

I don’t know if anybody does that sort of incremental construction, but it seems to me that surface construction should be able to be done like that. It’s not that different from regular road construction, and we have examples in town of doing it that way, such as the King St. reconstruction currently in progress.

By contrast, the frequently-mooted idea of doing that with subway construction (regardless of what kind of rail is being put in the tunnel) is obviously silly, because of the need to start and stop tunnelling.

[avernar]

Someone on Reddit made this interesting fantasy LRT map. I wish we had transit this extensive.

They also did a Google map of it: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1...sp=sharing

[ac3r]

That map really illustrates how many stations they envision haha. The only way a system like this would work is if it was underground or elevated within the city. No way you could have a surface level LRT move fast enough to stop at that many stations in a timely manner if it had to interact with traffic and stop at red lights like the LRT actually does. That's one of the biggest handicaps of our LRT in regards to expansion.

[clasher]

Boggles my mind that buses and the LRT don't already have stoplight priority.