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(10-04-2019, 04:08 PM)Bob_McBob Wrote: (10-04-2019, 02:47 PM)MidTowner Wrote: You're right. If someone is coming from the 401 and parking downtown, they might save $40 or $50 (depending on the lot) by hopping on the train at Fairway, and probably not spend more than a few extra minutes.
If you're coming off the 401 and heading downtown, Google estimates 7-14 minutes from the Fairway Rd expressway exit in a car at 8:30 AM. The ION station is 5-7 minutes of driving and another 20 minutes on the bus or train, plus up to 10 minutes of waiting. The cost difference is about $66-88/month depending on the exact lot, and extra gas probably adds another $12. Would you pay an extra $80-100 to avoid 14 hours of commuting? I think a lot of people would, and many appreciate having their car available for lunch and errands as well.
The "problem" with park and ride in KW is downtown parking is way too readily available to justify a GRT pass in addition to paying for a car, even though it ends up being significantly cheaper. It obviously works for whoever is using the lot right now, but I'm not sure there is a whole lot of demand unless the downtown parking situation changes considerably. I do think more people would use it if the region highlighted the cost difference since it's significant to some people, many of whom are probably not doing the math on an extra $90 for a pass.
This and so much this.
Never mind price, congestion wise, it's also no problem. People here love to complain about the traffic, but it really has nothing on peer cities.
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Congestion is the main factor. For all intents and purposes, there is none. I didn't check a map for estimated driving time, so thanks for doing that. And I believe the results: slow downs are uncommon, if it takes fifteen minutes it takes fifteen minutes.
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(10-04-2019, 04:08 PM)Bob_McBob Wrote: If you're coming off the 401 and heading downtown, Google estimates 7-14 minutes from the Fairway Rd expressway exit in a car at 8:30 AM. The ION station is 5-7 minutes of driving and another 20 minutes on the bus or train, plus up to 10 minutes of waiting. The cost difference is about $66-88/month depending on the exact lot, and extra gas probably adds another $12. Would you pay an extra $80-100 to avoid 14 hours of commuting? I think a lot of people would, and many appreciate having their car available for lunch and errands as well.
Not to argue the overall case, but please allow me to pick some nits. Let's assume 10 minutes' drive from the exit, plus maybe five minutes in the parking garage to drive up, park and exit, for a total of 15 minutes. For transit, it's a five-minute drive (says Google), a couple of minutes to park, an average five-minute wait for the train, plus 17 minutes to the Frederick station, for a total of 24 minutes. A difference of nine minutes; multiply by two (per day) and then by twenty (per month) and it's a total monthly difference of 360 minutes or six hours. I'm not quite sure how you arrived at 14.
However ... a lot of people seem to be willing to spend 90 minutes each way commuting to Toronto. That's a whopping 30 hours that people don't seem to account for at all.
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(10-08-2019, 03:08 PM)tomh009 Wrote: I'm not quite sure how you arrived at 14.
I used city hall since it's in the middle of DTK and took the average trip times Google Maps was reporting (10.5 minutes vs. 6+20+5 minutes) with an average of 20.5 working days per month. I also intentionally didn't include parking time since all travel time on the other end is highly dependent on the exact station or lot and ultimate destination.
The math in your comparison is a little off. The LRT trip you described adds up to 29 minutes, or 28 minutes' difference each day vs. the car trip. That makes it 9h20m longer than driving at 20 working days per month, or closer to 11 hours if you ride all the way to city hall. Either way it's a difficult case to make for many commuters because half an hour per day really adds up. The drive is just not long or congested enough to convince people to ditch their cars at the park and ride.
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Duh, yes, I missed one of the five-minute bits in the LRT journey. Thanks for catching that. The estimated difference is indeed 14 minutes each way.
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SUV driver trying to make a u-turn?
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Aren't all the intersections along there controlled? This shouldn't be possible without running a red light unless I'm mistaken.
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10-09-2019, 07:15 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-09-2019, 07:19 PM by jeffster.)
(10-09-2019, 06:53 PM)jamincan Wrote: Aren't all the intersections along there controlled? This shouldn't be possible without running a red light unless I'm mistaken.
No, you're not mistaken. One of two things: illegal left on red light, or the LRT ignored the white dash line. My money is on that it was an illegal turn, being that a slim majority of people in this city shouldn't own a car or be licensed to drive.
Sadly, science hasn't cured stupid yet.
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Someone who was on the ION that was involved said on Facebook that the car made a u-turn.
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I was thinking it must be an illegal u-turn on Charles.
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(10-09-2019, 07:15 PM)jeffster Wrote: …, or the LRT ignored the white dash line. ….
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It's been well over three months of service, and apparently there are still vehicle reliability/automatic control/or maybe some other issues that haven't been disclosed that is preventing Ion from running at the frequency specified in the project agreement.
I'm venting a little about that, but I'm curious if I'm missing some method of communication that GRT is using to provide updates? Does anyone know if we have received any recent info about what the specific problem is and when it's expected to be solved?
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(10-10-2019, 08:15 AM)MidTowner Wrote: It's been well over three months of service, and apparently there are still vehicle reliability/automatic control/or maybe some other issues that haven't been disclosed that is preventing Ion from running at the frequency specified in the project agreement.
I'm venting a little about that, but I'm curious if I'm missing some method of communication that GRT is using to provide updates? Does anyone know if we have received any recent info about what the specific problem is and when it's expected to be solved?
All that we've had is Record stories. I think they were pretty clear though, that the main limiter is vehicle availability due to work being done on them. There was a long list of things that were considered non-critical for launch, but which Bombardier was still required to address about the vehicles. All that work is still ongoing.
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