ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I think what would have been really great along here would have been a stop close to the Food Basics (so almost behind Partsource). That's one thing I didn't understand, as there aren't a lot of stops, at least in Kitchener, close to any supermarkets.

I was looking at an older satellite image and there seemed to be two trails, one right by McDonald's, and the other close to Michaels. The one at Michaels seems to have a sidewalk going in between two houses, perhaps put there by one of the property owners.

I only say Partsource/Fresh Burrito because, at that location, you could put a sidewalk in between the two apartment units on Traynor and also one between Partsource and Fresh Burrito. You're avoiding most vehicular traffic. Right in front Partsource and Fresh Burrito are a set of traffic lights, with pedestrian right of way.   This is the main entrance to Food Basic (that has a pharmacy) and the LCBO, Dollarama, and Petsmart.

The sidewalk off Balfour Crescent (the one across from Michaels) is an official access from the neighbourhood into the trail, it is the only one I see, but there could be others.

But in the context when this was constructed, this area was intended to be publicly accessible but it was intended as a recreational area.

'Proper' people would never walk to the businesses in behind, they would get in their cars and drive.  Welcome to the 1950s and upwards planning...its only recently that we've thought about changing this, but even today, we suck at pedestrian infra in new neighbourhoods.

It was simply good luck that this recreational facility backed onto businesses that people wanted to walk too, and thus were able to trespass/unofficially have access too those businesses.

This particular case is striking because access that used to exist has been lost, but more generally, we need to figure out a way to retrofit better access into our neighbourhoods across the city. Nobody is even talking about this, and on the rarest of cases when we actually try, neighbourhoods oppose it...because...well I don't have a better explanation than simple fear of change...any change.

As for the LRT, a stop near Traynor park probably could have been good.  There's a lot of space for redevelopment, and connecting down Manitou would have been useful as well.

There could have been a stop in the business park north of Hayward, as there's lot of land for development and more than a few of existing jobs there.  Plus, better access across Courtland would have connected too a fair bit of housing there as well.  For that matter, the stop at Conestoga could have been located along Kingsway and been substantially closer to a lot of housing there.

I hope that the planning staff ran through these possibilities and modelled them and found they weren't worth the cost of the added trip times.  Either way though, the Courtland/Fairway corridor does seem to be one of the more poorly planned corridors for pedestrian access--and that's in a project which hasn't shown they've planned well for it.

[jeffster]

Oh, OK. I kind of thought that the sidewalk looked "official", but I really thought it was a homeowner that had done this.

This kind of changes some of my thoughts; if they already had an official sidewalk going out to the hydro corridor, then obviously the trespassing wasn't discouraged, rather, it seemed to have been endorsed a little bit. Which makes me think that more of those in charge must have been aware of what the hydro corridor was being used for.

[KevinL]

...they already had an official sidewalk going out to the hydro corridor, then obviously the trespassing wasn't discouraged, rather, it seemed to have been endorsed a little bit.  Which makes me think that more of those in charge must have been aware of what the hydro corridor was being used for.

The trespassing wasn't in the hydro corridor itself - that was open to the public like most existing hydro corridors are.

The trespass happened when someone stepped from the corridor onto a business' property. True, this was usually to an open parking area, and often tacitly encouraged; but never official, and never onto public land. And that was the case along the entire length of Fairway from Manitou to Wilson. That's the distinction we have to resolve; any crossing built now must be to a public path (which does not yet exist), that must have land purchased or expropriated in order to exist.

[KevinL]

In more positive news, the new LRVs have been spotted near the train station.

https://twitter.com/sjaybrown/status/101...9090102272

[Markster]

any crossing built now must be to a public path (which does not yet exist), that must have land purchased or expropriated in order to exist.

Or an easement granting a right-of-way to the crossing.

[bgb_ca]

In more positive news, the new LRVs have been spotted near the train station.

https://twitter.com/sjaybrown/status/101...9090102272

I'm guessing it's going up the spur on tomorrow night's chem train?

[Pheidippides]

3) The desire to come close to budget.

I would give a lot of weight to this suggestion. We had a budget for a barebones system that also had operational constraints (46min end-to-end?) and some things just had to go to make sure the system met all the parameters.

I do think that not consulting enough with those affected the most also contributed. I was hoping for some formal "lessons learned" to be published before we got too far along in phase 2 so this kind of thing would be less likely to happen, but it is almost too late now. Hopefully, someone is thinking about all the voices they haven't heard from in the phase 2 consultations. They are certainly hearing from the vocal and organized groups enough; hopefully not to the detriment of another less vocal group (for whatever reasons).

[darts]

For phase 2 I cant remember if it is still behind dundas street but there is some obvious walking routes between Norfolk and Dundas, not many though.

Dundas st on that stretch is 40 because it is a school zone, I wonder if the LRT would be reduced too since other than the walking trail to the school and a street I don't think there would be much reason for it to go slow.

[danbrotherston]

3) The desire to come close to budget.

I would give a lot of weight to this suggestion. We had a budget for a barebones system that also had operational constraints (46min end-to-end?) and some things just had to go to make sure the system met all the parameters.

I do think that not consulting enough with those affected the most also contributed. I was hoping for some formal "lessons learned" to be published before we got too far along in phase 2 so this kind of thing would be less likely to happen, but it is almost too late now. Hopefully, someone is thinking about all the voices they haven't heard from in the phase 2 consultations. They are certainly hearing from the vocal and organized groups enough; hopefully not to the detriment of another less vocal group (for whatever reasons).

To be honest, I want to know why this isn't a regular practice for every large project.  Weber St. could teach many many lessons to staff about what not to do.

[welltoldtales]

Just to add to the debate of the last pages, I inquired about the new Lancaster Street Reconstruction and was thrice rebuffed because they only do community consultations after engineering. So What I believe are the critical things to consider in the reconstruction won't even be considered until we have spent millions on designing the system (More than likely without community needs).

Then politicians and engineers will not want to go back and adjust designs once it is presented as there will be a large amount of sunk cost.

I know that community consultations can be frustrating and annoying trying to balance so many "needs". I have seen that many times first hand were members don't know what is critical to their own actual objectives. I do feel like if someone had told the Traynor neighbourhood in 2007 when the system was designed that they wouldn't be able to cross someone would have raised this concern. I also feel like it probably would have been ignored because the very underlying goals of the system didn't align.

This is similar to the affordable housing debate around LRT stations. It makes so much sense to plan for affordable housing around LRT because urban poor populations tend to use transit more. But our stated goal was actually to get more development charges and grow the economy.

[danbrotherston]

Just to add to the debate of the last pages, I inquired about the new Lancaster Street Reconstruction and was thrice rebuffed because they only do community consultations after engineering. So What I believe are the critical things to consider in the reconstruction won't even be considered until we have spent millions on designing the system (More than likely without community needs).

Then politicians and engineers will not want to go back and adjust designs once it is presented as there will be a large amount of sunk cost.

I know that community consultations can be frustrating and annoying trying to balance so many "needs". I have seen that many times first hand were members don't know what is critical to their own actual objectives. I do feel like if someone had told the Traynor neighbourhood in 2007 when the system was designed that they wouldn't be able to cross someone would have raised this concern. I also feel like it probably would have been ignored because the very underlying goals of the system didn't align.

This is similar to the affordable housing debate around LRT stations. It makes so much sense to plan for affordable housing around LRT because urban poor populations tend to use transit more. But our stated goal was actually to get more development charges and grow the economy.

This is a key point.  They also don't do any consultation on detailed design.  Many of the issues I raise at consultations are "detailed design issues" and I'm told they aren't looking at them right now.

But those details matter a lot.  Especially for marginal infrastructure.  A 1.25 meter bike lane next to a half meter gutter with curb side profile storm drains is vastly different than a 1.25 meter bike lane immediately next to a barrier curb with flat profile storm drains.

[Canard]

As a designer of complex automation systems, I totally get where they're coming from.

I don't mind when a customer has input at the "concept" stage... but final design reviews are awful if you go into too much detail (or allow the customer to dig really deep). They want to change everything... and there's a massive cost that is involved in that, because it's like doubling your engineering time.

[tomh009]

As a designer of complex automation systems, I totally get where they're coming from.

I don't mind when a customer has input at the "concept" stage... but final design reviews are awful if you go into too much detail (or allow the customer to dig really deep).  They want to change everything... and there's a massive cost that is involved in that, because it's like doubling your engineering time.

In our (software) product world, I would solicit for feedback on the high-level requirements from the public early on, before the engineering team develops the detailed design and specifications to meet those requirements. But the city would still need to arbitrate and balance those comments, to define what the final requirements should be.

[ijmorlan]

Yes. If they were working from maps they wouldn't see it. They would have to work from sat photos, which may not be part of their workflow, or as jeffster points out, the designers may have gotten overruled by people who only looked at the maps.

I’m pretty sure no project of this nature gets designed without site visits. Not noticing the plainly obvious existing paths is basically malpractice as far as I’m concerned. Now, as has been discussed by others, we’re never going to be able to figure out specifically whose fault it is — there may well have been junior designers who noticed them and suggested a crossing, or suggested looking at the issue, but who were overruled by more senior and less competent people. It’s even conceivable that Grandlinq asked the Region about it and staff there looked at their book and saw that there was no formal right-of-way so decided to ignore it. In this case it would be the fault of the Regional staff involved. We don’t know, but I don’t think it’s possible for this specific error to have been made without somebody dropping the ball.

[ijmorlan]

Frankly, I think the root of our disagreement here is that for some reason you refuse to actually think about rail safety, instead retreating to blind application of rules.

I think you go too far here. Canard is clearly thinking about safety.  Just in a different way from you. No need to claim they aren't.

I’m not sure what word I should be using. The intent of the italics is to suggest that in this particular case when I say “think” I don’t just mean that the topic is consciously present in the mind, but that actual analysis is being done on it, which I don’t believe is the case. I explained briefly why I think it is reasonably safe for those people to cross; the response was just a context-free reference to a website, with absolutely no attempt to explain why I’m wrong (i.e., why it actually isn’t reasonably safe to cross). For example, in another situation (not this one), somebody could explain that from first detecting the train to being under its wheels I would have less than 3s, which is not enough time to clear off the crossing safely and reliably.

I agree with ijmorlan that the Operation Lifesaver stuff goes over the top. You'd think that all trains are stealth machines traveling at HSR speeds on any track at any time.
Rails should be seen as another road, with a different kind of vehicle. A vehicle that may be much more infrequent, but absolutely will not stop for you. It's a different kind of dangerous from a vehicular road, but we made tradeoffs about danger every time we cross one of those too.

Well put. Spur Line < LRT < mainline freight < HSR. And to a large extent this is reflected in the crossing requirements, ranging from nothing in some cases along the Spur Line up to no level crossings permitted at all on HSR. To be fair to Operation Lifesaver, my impression is that they emphasize mainline heavy rail, which tends to have high speeds, low frequencies, and long trains. So it’s easy to believe a line is abandoned — one could cross daily for years and never see a train — and believe that playing on it is no problem at all. Urban LRT is very different and is really much more like a bus every few minutes. So intrinsically much safer than a busy road, which in addition to the bus every few minutes has a constant stream of cars and trucks.