ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[MidTowner]

Here I thought there was something going on at the nightclub. I was awake at that time with the windows open and all I heard was talking most of the night. I'm down closer to Moore but I'm amazed I didn't hear asphalt coming up. It will be awesome once King is opened up to Wellington to divert some of the hauling trucks and soon to be cement trucks off of Louisa St. Can't wait.

It won't be too long now before King is opened, and the neighbourhood is quieter again.

Question for you: does Louisa get a lot of cut-through traffic on your block, or is it generally pretty quiet (I mean before the construction period)?

[curiouschair]

I took some pictures around Erb and Caroline today:

   
   
   

[Pheidippides]

Still just a big, now wet, hole on the north side of King:
   

A paved Willis:
   

[KevinL]

Looks like they will NOT be opening Queen at Charles after all - that strip of asphalt has been pulled up and the trench for embedding has been dug all the way from Benton to Ontario. They've put one of those temporary pedestrian bridges over the gap at Queen (and metal plates for vehicles at the Full Circle parking entrance).

[panamaniac]

Queen and Charles and Duke between Queen and Frederick seem to have become the spots where construction progress goes to die.

[Markster]

If construction progress goes to die at Queen/Charles, then clearly someone has invented resurrection:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Progress lookin' good. Queen &amp; Charles <a href="https://twitter.com/CityKitchener">@CityKitchener</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/rideIONrt">@rideIONrt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kitchener?src=hash">#kitchener</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/everydayisnew?src=hash">#everydayisnew</a> <a href="https://t.co/6ltuwS8vbM">pic.twitter.com/6ltuwS8vbM</a></p>&mdash; Sandy Sabourin (@Etherialle1) <a href="https://twitter.com/Etherialle1/status/743852879409217538">June 17, 2016</a></blockquote>

[KevinL]

I think panamaniac was hoping for vehicular access to open as part of the progress.

[panamaniac]

Indeed - with the King St closing season now upon us, the sooner Charles is back in action the better, imo.

[C Plus]

Here I thought there was something going on at the nightclub. I was awake at that time with the windows open and all I heard was talking most of the night. I'm down closer to Moore but I'm amazed I didn't hear asphalt coming up. It will be awesome once King is opened up to Wellington to divert some of the hauling trucks and soon to be cement trucks off of Louisa St. Can't wait.

It won't be too long now before King is opened, and the neighbourhood is quieter again.

Question for you: does Louisa get a lot of cut-through traffic on your block, or is it generally pretty quiet (I mean before the construction period)?

I would have to say there wasn't much cut through traffic because of the proximity of Wellington and the added amount of stop signs on Louisa. But I only lived on the street for about 5 months before King St construction so take this response with that in mind.

[Markster]

Yeah, it sure would be nice to see some of King and Charles open back up.

The official closing was in March of last year, and things were being torn up in April. It's been well over a year now.

[Canard]

After following the construction of the Kansas City Streetcar project, I got to ride it today!  We're on a big Midwest US road trip (2700 km and counting) right now, and one of our stops is Kansas City.  This is a great little system that came in on-time and under-budget, and is heavily used.  Every train I saw today was packed.  It connects Kansas City's (absolutely massive!) Union Station with their thriving Riverfront District.  The line uses CAF Urbos3 trams, which have the same type of fixed-bogie configuration that our Bombardier FLEXITY trams will have (just 2 fewer modules).  The line does not run in a dedicated ROW, so traffic does have to wait and gets hung up a bit... but they have maintained a massive amount of (free) parking all along the entire route, so I think that's a very fair compromise.

Seeing how well the system works here makes me that much more excited for opening day for ion!

   

   

   

   

   

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">...it's the little things. <a href="https://twitter.com/kcstreetcar">@kcstreetcar</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RideKCTransit">@RideKCTransit</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/kclightrail">@kclightrail</a> Cc: <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisjamesdrew">@chrisjamesdrew</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/rideIONrt">@rideIONrt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LightRail?src=hash">#LightRail</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KC?src=hash">#KC</a> <a href="https://t.co/WjBV3L4xjO">pic.twitter.com/WjBV3L4xjO</a></p>&mdash; iain (@Canardiain) <a href="https://twitter.com/Canardiain/status/744279521927430144">June 18, 2016</a></blockquote>

[GtwoK]

Were there cat poles here before? I can't remember. Either way, I really like this area of Uptown now. It will look so great with trains running through it!



Here as well... you can see so much completed track here. And with Cedar closing on Monday , we'll just about finally have a through route of track all the way down Charles!



Some of the progress at Queen / Charles. I believe Markster posted some photos of this to the FB group recently, but here's a panorama from above!



Poles are up on Francis. track is also laid (but not embedded) from Water down to Bell. There's 3 types of poles, I'm trying to figure them out; the tall cone-like ones are street lights, I think? and the short, metal ones must be traffic lights? There's black plastic things around where the cat poles will go. It seems like there's a lot of the street light ones here, maybe just because of the visibility around the curve? will be a mess of lights, either way.

[MidTowner]

Thanks for the photos, GtwoK! Especially the overhead of Charles at Queen.

[Canard]

Sod has gone down along Borden! It's looking positively phenominal!

[Markster]

My walk down Charles St.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I took a walk down Charles St to see how the <a href="https://twitter.com/rideIONrt">@rideIONrt</a> progress is going.<br>Wow, this thing looks ready to open. <a href="https://t.co/cMyzieYA1R">pic.twitter.com/cMyzieYA1R</a></p>&mdash; Mark Jackson-Brown (@Markster3000) <a href="https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/744209916597002240">June 18, 2016</a></blockquote>