ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[jgsz]

Does anyone know how the emergency shuttle bus systems work? Where do the drivers come from? Are they on call or pulled off other lines?  Do other lines suffer as a result?  Do we know how long it is between a disruption in service and shuttle service starting up?

GRT knew about this event in advance so they just scheduled extra drivers.

[GarthDanlor]

The cenotaph is scheduled to be disassembled for restoration soon, so the next couple years may not actually require this.

I have not heard this before.  Is there a source with more info?

Edit:  Part of the plaza renovation, I assume?

It would be nice if it moved to Victoria Park, near the old city hall clock tower.  Plenty of room there.  I thought this was a plan (at one time anyway)?

[panamaniac]

I have not heard this before.  Is there a source with more info?

Edit:  Part of the plaza renovation, I assume?

It would be nice if it moved to Victoria Park, near the old city hall clock tower.  Plenty of room there.  I thought this was a plan (at one time anyway)?

If it was, I've not heard of it.  I would find a location in Victoria Park a bit out "out of the way" for the cenotaph.  I would expect it to be in a very "front and centre" kind of location (the way it used to be ....)

[ijmorlan]

That being said, a lot of this also relates to poor planning, they couldn't run S/B trains, because they'd have run out of trains (even at ever 15 minutes, all the trains would be south of DTK within about 2-3 hours). What *SHOULD* have been done is the appropriate switches in place to allow trains to reach Central station and reverse, OR switch the NB trains onto the SB tracks to go around DTK.  We knew DTK would be a hot spot for closures, that should have been part of the design.

What is weird is that the system is capable of running in reverse, as we saw during testing. The problem is that the crossovers don’t exist for convenient reverse-running (except for the spur line segment with the freight traffic).

[ijmorlan]

Update on the pedestrian crossing of University at the LRT: we have previously discussed the fact that the pedestrian signal can be safely permissive while the crossing protection is activated. Today I happened to reach the intersection at about the same time the crossing started activating, and I was walking rather than bicycling so it was convenient to try a couple of experiments.

What I found is that if the pedestrian button is pressed while pedestrians have a red hand, it immediately goes to walking person. If it is pressed during the countdown, the countdown finishes normally and then immediately goes to walking person.

Of course, this is mostly moot because everybody can see it’s perfectly safe because of the train signals, so they just cross against the red, but it’s interesting. Still doesn’t explain why it doesn’t just stay on walking person, but the designers do seem to have integrated the pedestrian signals in a reasonable way given that all pedestrian signals are to be requested by pressing the button.

[danbrotherston]

That being said, a lot of this also relates to poor planning, they couldn't run S/B trains, because they'd have run out of trains (even at ever 15 minutes, all the trains would be south of DTK within about 2-3 hours). What *SHOULD* have been done is the appropriate switches in place to allow trains to reach Central station and reverse, OR switch the NB trains onto the SB tracks to go around DTK.  We knew DTK would be a hot spot for closures, that should have been part of the design.

What is weird is that the system is capable of running in reverse, as we saw during testing. The problem is that the crossovers don’t exist for convenient reverse-running (except for the spur line segment with the freight traffic).

I know that trains *can* run reverse, but the crossovers don't exist to allow it to be used in service, then it doesn't have that ability...I have no idea why they didn't think of this.

[danbrotherston]

Update on the pedestrian crossing of University at the LRT: we have previously discussed the fact that the pedestrian signal can be safely permissive while the crossing protection is activated. Today I happened to reach the intersection at about the same time the crossing started activating, and I was walking rather than bicycling so it was convenient to try a couple of experiments.

What I found is that if the pedestrian button is pressed while pedestrians have a red hand, it immediately goes to walking person. If it is pressed during the countdown, the countdown finishes normally and then immediately goes to walking person.

Of course, this is mostly moot because everybody can see it’s perfectly safe because of the train signals, so they just cross against the red, but it’s interesting. Still doesn’t explain why it doesn’t just stay on walking person, but the designers do seem to have integrated the pedestrian signals in a reasonable way given that all pedestrian signals are to be requested by pressing the button.

Peds are required to beg in our region.

[ijmorlan]

Peds are required to beg in our region.

Sadly. By “reasonable” I just meant in line with elsewhere in the Region, not that I actually think it’s ideal.

At this particular location I still think it should just be always green for pedestrians except when traffic on University Ave. triggers a sensor to request a green.

[Coke6pk]

I think this is a poorly designed intersection.

I was at that intersection a month or so back, and noticed that a majority of times the railway crossing gates would go up, the traffic had a red light. There were countless times traffic started moving when the gates lifted, but the light was red.

WR drivers cant figure out to stay out of the LRT's way, how do we expect them to manage two traffic signals at once?

Coke

[jason897]

I think this is a poorly designed intersection.

I was at that intersection a month or so back, and noticed that a majority of times the railway crossing gates would go up, the traffic had a red light.  There were countless times traffic started moving when the gates lifted, but the light was red. 

WR drivers cant figure out to stay out of the LRT's way, how do we expect them to manage two traffic signals at once?

Coke

I think I described this exact issue at Mill/Ottawa a while back. I wonder if a valid solution for University crossing would be if the train just passed purposely leave the gates down & railway crossing lights flashing a bit longer until the traffic light is ready to change to green...

[trainspotter139]

[KevinL]

Huzzah!

[ijmorlan]

I think I described this exact issue at Mill/Ottawa a while back. I wonder if a valid solution for University crossing would be if the train just passed purposely leave the gates down & railway crossing lights flashing a bit longer until the traffic light is ready to change to green...

The gates controlling the sidewalks need to go up. I don’t remember if both of the gates controlling motor traffic are separate from the sidewalk ones. If they are then this could work. I’m not sure what I think about this. There might be places where it is severely inconvenient to have the gates stay down when the train is gone — what if it’s hard to have the gates stay down only for movements that still have a red? This could be viewed as pandering to ignorance — drivers simply need to learn to follow both sets of signals. But of course that probably isn’t going to happen unless we change our whole attitude toward driver licensing.

It would probably be better to get rid of the gates entirely and control it only with traffic lights. I believe railway crossing lights pre-date traffic lights, and now that we have traffic lights it’s not really clear to me why we need two different kinds of lights; and anybody who can’t obey a red has no business driving, so it’s not clear to me what the gates are really for. But of course that is probably against a regulation.

On another side note, has anybody noticed that the crossing in the park just north of the bridge over the creek stays activated way too long? I mean at least a minute or two after the trains have gone by.

[Square]

[bgb_ca]

For some reason, I'm not getting any real-time info for GRT (bus and LRT) in transit only for GO.  And I did check some other systems as well like TTC to ensure that still worked.