ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

OCS pole installation along the Waterloo Spur, track installation along the road sections which are now complete/rebuilt (ie, Charles/Borden/Caroline/King), track installation at the OMSF, tent erection at Victoria/King for continuous work... in short, a lot! Just no heavy road/utility work.

[panamaniac]

Now that winter seems to have set in, any ideas what is going to take place construction-wise over the next few months? I can't imagine they'll stop completely, but I imagine a lot of work is simply not possible or practical until warmer temperatures return.

Surely Queen at Charles will re-open before the spring?

[KevinL]

Can embedded track be poured in the sort of temperatures we have now? I would not have thought so, but technology is marching on, so...

[timio]

Yep. Tarps and portable heaters can work wonders. Not the most efficient method, but it still gets the job done.

[Pheidippides]

I happened across York Region's VivaNext webpage today and instantly had some project webpage envy.

Each section has per cent completion:
   

Drill into each section and you find a Gantt chart and map:
   
   


There are quarterly reports too:
http://www.vivanext.com/files/BoardMeeti...2_2015.pdf


I quite like some of the station designs.

[tomh009]

Now that winter seems to have set in, any ideas what is going to take place construction-wise over the next few months? I can't imagine they'll stop completely, but I imagine a lot of work is simply not possible or practical until warmer temperatures return.

Surely Queen at Charles will re-open before the spring?

Queen at Duke is now open again.  Queen at Charles was looking pretty much deserted today.

[Canard]

http://m.therecord.com/news-story/621804...n-lrt-dome-

[GtwoK]

Hold on a sec... This dome, meant for climate controlling the area, should theoretically be very low to the ground, if not touching it. Correct? How will they deal with the trains that have to go through every night and morning? If it's taking them a month to construct, there's no way they can take it down at the end of every day, nor does it make sense to. Some kind of train door? :p

[Markster]

The rail line was relocated north of the site of the grade separation.
The dome will be south of the active rail line.

[Viewfromthe42]

This morning I noticed a bunch of construction barrel barricades along the yellow line of King from Francis to Victoria. I can't imagine they'd be doing any work for LRT related to this area, but perhaps something is happening at 1Vic instead?

[Chris]

I found this an interesting read on Edmonton's LRT in the National Post.

Tristin Hopper: The $600 million Edmonton train that snarls traffic, slows down transit times and increases emissions

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-commen...-emissions

How did Edmonton seemingly get it so wrong? Between the slow speeds forced by the grade and poor signals this has to be awful for people using any form of transit in the city.

I picture our system running like the city's I've visited so I hope the ion lands on the Denver/San Diego side of effective LRT and not the Edmonton system. San Diego's LRT has a ton of street level crossing but the barriers are only down for a minute or two and then traffic gets back to normal.

[Markster]

You'll find that article also being talked about in a recently posted Edmonton LRT thread.


The Edmonton example is largely the result of a long, drawn out, ongoing issue with the signalling system.  There were faults with the systems as installed, and the complaints in that article are largely the result of running the line without proper signalling.  The line was delayed a year as they tried to solve the problems before opening, but with little movement, they've decided to open with what they have.  The city has even considered a lawsuit, though I can't find anything on that front in the past 6 months.

A lot of the people currently being inconvenienced can't even take advantage of the line, because it's a relatively short stub, more focused on connecting NAIT with the downtown and other schools on the LRT. It won't be a useful commuter route until it's extended further north.

[Chris]

You'll find that article also being talked about in a recently posted Edmonton LRT thread.

Thanks, I've never been in that section of the forum before but I see a lot of interesting posts to read.

Chris

[Canard]

Well that's great, somebody must have tipped off 570 news about the National Post article, as it's now one of today's headlines. Eric Drozd will have the guy who wrote the article on his radio show today in order to infuriate the peeons.

http://www.570news.com/2016/01/07/waterl...rt-future/

[chutten]

Do we have a catalogue of known LRT biases for news outlets and reporters?