ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Markster]

In the (near!) future, you might have one train lane to your left that does come up from behind you, adjacent to you, on parts of the system where the trains are in the middle of the road instead of the edges.

As a reminder, in any situation where this is the case, they're going to have full signal control over when people can and cannot turn left. In any crash in that scenario, someone will have disobeyed a signal.

The picture that started this discussion does not have such an irregularity.

[Viewfromthe42]

There will likely have to be a campaign that sets up bylaws preventing vehicular traffic from ever being stopped on tracks. The issue will be that for left turns, there will be a temptation to treat a center-running, bi-directional track as a place to wait for opposing traffic to clear. Drivers will have a green light to go left, but will pull out from the turning lane, and will straddle the tracks. Instead of having their nose outside of the tracks, they will seek to have the nose of their car just outside of oncoming traffic, placing their car on both tracks. The same thing will occur in the example above for the driver coming from the top. He will be required to keep his nose out of the tracks and crosswalk while waiting to turn right and cross both in the process, but instead he will straddle both the tracks and crosswalks. It will not be signals that are disobeyed, but location-of-car rules. We already allow (by convention, not law) several cars to sit in an intersection waiting to turn left. Breaking that bad habit, disallowed as it may be, will be exceedingly hard.

[Chris]

They should just close King and run the tracks in both directions through downtown Kitchener...

A 16th Street Mall through downtown Kitchener would be awesome.

[Markster]

There will likely have to be a campaign that sets up bylaws preventing vehicular traffic from ever being stopped on tracks. The issue will be that for left turns, there will be a temptation to treat a center-running, bi-directional track as a place to wait for opposing traffic to clear. Drivers will have a green light to go left, but will pull out from the turning lane, and will straddle the tracks.
[...]
We already allow (by convention, not law) several cars to sit in an intersection waiting to turn left.

I doubt there will be any left turns allowed across the centre ROW that are not fully protected with a left turn arrow. There will not be any need to wait in the intersection. The LRT will have a red, and the left turning cars will have an advance green.

[Viewfromthe42]

Outside of Cambridge, we don't have many places where left and straight are two mutually-exclusive signals. There will be an advance green, but will there be straight-only when the advance green is gone? Will somebody enter the intersection when the light turns yellow, but only make it onto the tracks before opposing traffic gets their straight-ahead green and blocks him on the tracks?

[Markster]

It's such a standard thing to me growing up in suburban Ottawa that I never even realized that it's not as common around here. But as you say, there's already precedent in Cambridge.

Left turning traffic gets a yellow, then a red, and after a short overlap of red with the opposing through traffic, the opposing traffic gets a green.  If you've entered on yellow, you can exit on the red.  If you find yourself stranded, then you either entered on the red, or the cross street was backed up, and you entered an intersection that you would be unable to clear.

[timc]

Outside of Cambridge, we don't have many places where left and straight are two mutually-exclusive signals. There will be an advance green, but will there be straight-only when the advance green is gone? Will somebody enter the intersection when the light turns yellow, but only make it onto the tracks before opposing traffic gets their straight-ahead green and blocks him on the tracks?

Do we still have those signals on Fairway? Honestly, I rarely go out that way, so I wouldn't know.

[KevinL]

The difference in weight I had was based on an assumption that they were a bit longer than the TTC streetcar variant. I could very well have misremembered.  Bombardier's website is fairly sparse on data for the exact variant we'll be getting.  If they are the same length, then they will be of comparable weight, meaning the comparison with a tractor trailer holds even better.

According to their respective Wikipedia articles, the Freedom (our vehicle) is about 3m longer and about 10cm wider than the Outlook (TTC streetcar). It doesn't list a weight for the Freedom; the Outlook is listed as 48,200 kg.

[chutten]

There's a "left turn signal" on Weber heading south across Northfield. It isn't an arrow, it's a full set of lights which governs right-of-way for the left-turning lanes. (iow, if it's red, you don't enter the intersection)

I have no idea if it's respected well or at all.

[Canard]

if there's an n+1 light dedicated for left turns and it's red, you cannot enter the intersection with the intention of turning left (even if it's clear and safe to do so). These are all over and I never see people disobeying them.

[kitborn]

They should have buried the hydro and fiber optics.

[Canard]

I agree, i think it's more than a bit unfortunate that on King, we'll still have separate hydro poles and catenary poles for ion. In other cities I've visited, they've integrated these together so there is only one set of poles down the roadway.

[D40LF]

Just read that latest Ion update... wow, @ shutting down Courtland to through traffic for 6 months. Though I see the necessity when you've got intersections like ho Blockline / Courtland is planed to look.

lol at "6 months"

We all know it will be closed for much, much longer.

[KevinL]

Well, this stretch of Courtland is much newer than the downtown stuff, and has never been seriously developed. I would expect fewer 'surprises' to delay the work.

[Markster]

It sure would have been useful to have finished that dome by today...

They're going to spend half the winter building this thing. Here's "hoping" it's a cold and brutal Feb/March to make up for it.