ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[KevinL]

 Big, wide, black duct tape.  

I knew it was duct tape, but I didn't know they used such a wide roll! Very cool how many specialized items go into this.

[Canard]

There are weird black fabric tarps covering the fences now just North of the freight tracks where they cross King in uptown Waterloo. It's almost like they're setting up welding tarps, except welding tarps are usually like a vinyl/plastic material. What's going on/what's being hidden?

[Markster]

Looks like an old version of the creek culvert.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Forget corduroy road - huge stone cavern tunnel found under King Street! Former creek aqueduct? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wrLRT?src=hash">#wrLRT</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WRAwesome?src=hash">#WRAwesome</a> <a href="https://t.co/9B7OwkiILy">pic.twitter.com/9B7OwkiILy</a></p>&mdash; Kevin Thomason (@kthomason) <a href="https://twitter.com/kthomason/status/755862172031455234">July 20, 2016</a></blockquote>

[DKsan]

I know that could possibly delay the LRT more but it's so amazing and cool.

[Waterlooer]

Hmm, if this is north of the freight line crossing King, and this needs to be investigated, I'd hope that it wouldn't effect the main Uptown ION construction south of the fright line.

[BuildingScout]

They were running power generators to the signal boxes North of Bearinger Rd. and they installed in the middle of the tracks something that looked like an induction or AC motion detector to activate the signal.

[Viewfromthe42]

Got a notice in the mail last night saying that Frederick/Benton would close from Charles to Weber as of late July, so expect it to disappear next week, and for there to be further traffic chaos as people figure out their workaround routes.

[panamaniac]

Got a notice in the mail last night saying that Frederick/Benton would close from Charles to Weber as of late July, so expect it to disappear next week, and for there to be further traffic chaos as people figure out their workaround routes.

Does that include the intersections at King and at Duke?

[timc]

Hmm, if this is north of the freight line crossing King, and this needs to be investigated, I'd hope that it wouldn't effect the main Uptown ION construction south of the fright line.

I'd be more concerned about it affecting the reopening of King Street than I am about the rail construction.

[Canard]

As a resident, that is the concern, yes.

The freight operator requires that the line be available every night; and only certain exemptions from CN (lots of fancy paperwork) will permit a multi-day shutdown (like what was done for the Culvert last summer).

[KevinL]

Frederick at King and Frederick at Duke will be closing for the duration, yes. This will make access on the southeast side tricky.

[BuildingScout]

I was talking to a taxi driver the other day and he jokingly described the LRT obstruction as "the new Berlin wall". He added that we would cross to the other side at Checkpoint Charlie (William St.)

[Markster]

Got a notice in the mail last night saying that Frederick/Benton would close from Charles to Weber as of late July, so expect it to disappear next week, and for there to be further traffic chaos as people figure out their workaround routes.

I imagine that it will close within a week of Queen/Duke opening. It sounds like they'll try to make it within days.

[KevinL]

Estimated date on the Frederick closure is the 27th (Wednesday).

[GtwoK]

Duke / Young closing again for 10 days starting next Wednesday. Rail installation, possibly? Not sure what else left there would be to do here. Seems kinda strange that they would just jump around doing all the intersection trackwork first, then filling in the gaps in between - the process so far has been doing the trackwork sequentially and closing the intersections as needed.