ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I think the thing that this has really revealed to me is just how invalid the "cyclists run red lights" rhetoric really is.

I knew drivers ran red lights sometimes, but given how wide the tolerances for the LRT are, it's clear to me that drivers run red lights CONSTANTLY...and not like...just red...LONG red.

As for speed...good luck finding answers...I've been asking for a while and got nothing. But there is no justification for this, for the LRV to be surrounded by cars doing 20 over the limit while it's forced to do 10, 20, 30 under the limit in some places.

Everyone here is on board with slow = safer, but I guarantee you, STOPPED LRVs would get crashed into. At a certain point, the problem is cars.

And I'm so tired of tunnels being painted as the magical solution...Toronto has a streetcar tunnel...it is not car free..

So true! If a cyclist runs a red where nobody is around, I really don’t care at all — they have excellent visibility and can see when it’s safe. And if they mess up, it’s their life on the line, almost certainly nobody else’s.

And as you say, if it’s OK for cars in the road to whip by pedestrians on the sidewalk going 50km/h faster than the pedestrians (at least), then it’s OK for the LRT to go 20km/h faster than the cars in the adjacent lane. That would have the LRT going 80km/h on King, which would be awesome! I think the limiting factor would be acceleration into and out of stations. If the LRT has to be limited to 60km/h (or whatever) for some reason, I’d be OK with using technological measures to prevent adjacent motor vehicles from exceeding 40km/h (or 20km/h less than the LRT speed).

I’m just going to post this again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImU1mG7QC4I

Although one has to ask, at what point is the problem with individual drivers, and not with the system? This guy ignored both traffic control signs and that handy device hanging off the side of the cab known as a side mirror.

Indeed, motor vehicle operators are part of the system. The problem with our 'road safety' campaigns that "ignore human factors" isn't that they shouldn't attempt to change people...it's that asking people to do better isn't a real solution.

You can change the environment, you can also change people, but changing people requires more than asking, training, testing, restricting are options which actually change human behaviour.

Commercial operators have restrictions on time and requirements for rest. Airline pilots have extensive training. There's also no tolerance of bad behaviour. One of the reasons people text and drive (or run red lights) is because they (rightfully) think there are no consequences.