Grand River Transit

[ac3r]

I can't remember, are there sections of the Ion route where the LRVs can be sped up without any engineering changes?

Thanks to a really, really, really stupid design that has it interacting with roads, driveways, sidewalks, pathways and the nonsensical signal priorities they can't safely speed it up for a lot of sections. It's not really about engineering challenges (though there are some, like the rdiculous turns near Hayward) or having passengers jerked around (which happens anyway...it can be going in a straight line and suddenly the thing feels like one of the wheelsets derailed, then the operator has to slow down for a second) and more due to a tiny budget.

Like across intersections is one thing (it's not ideal, but trains have done that for a century now), but that they thought it would be a good idea to run a rapid transit system across private single family home driveways is unbelievable. That would be like running Line 4 Sheppard down the middle of Sheppard Road rather than underground so that an entire subway was flying past driveways every 2-5 minutes and it doesn't take a transit engineer to tell you that would be a stupid idea. Or putting centre island platforms in the middle of a road...like what the hell is that?

Any issues with our system is due to us seeking to spend as little money as possible. It was cheaper for us to risk perpetual crashes into cars or literally running children over than it was to make a rapid transit system that doesn't risk, say, a little kid playing on a scooter in their driveway suddenly getting pulverized by a train.

Here's a funny YouTube comment I came across recently where someone was just as perplexed by the weird design choices:

This is the strangest rail line I've ever seen. First going next to the street against traffic with no guard rails then ''on'' the street against the curb, station stops on an island in the middle of the street? Some  intersections the train has to stop, others it don't? Who designed this anyway?  Some 9 year old?