06-23-2017, 12:28 PM
(06-23-2017, 12:13 PM)Canard Wrote: As always: we don't know what the restrictions were on the designers. It's not fair to simply say "they could have just...".
As a designer myself, I immediately start ignoring someone when they use the "j" word when talking to me.
They could still do a better job of explaining. Why is Willis Way narrow, anyway? It sure looks like some slight adjustments that would be very expensive now but which would have cost almost nothing at the design stage would have left them with more space on the platform. Just saying “geometry” is effectively using a noise word that doesn’t explain why the LRT track couldn’t have been shifted over a couple of feet, an amount that doesn’t require massive curves.
Another example: I suggested putting a platform for the tourist train between the freight and LRT tracks at Northfield. Response: “not enough space”. Nonsense! There is obviously tons of space, not necessarily within the then-existing right-of-way, but by expanding it slightly. Now, I can’t say if it would actually be cost-effective to pay for more real estate to have a wider right-of-way there, but it doesn’t make sense to say that there isn’t enough space. If they had decided a TPSS had to go there they wouldn’t have vetoed the location just because they needed a few more feet. Maybe if there were large buildings there that are obviously not up for expropriation (which actually may be a legitimate reason why Allen platform can’t be wider), but not with the actual surroundings at Northfield.
Or in the park, when the tree-cutting discussion came up. Somebody, I think a Regional councillor, said something about the railway right-of-way being wider than many people realize. But that is totally irrelevant! We don’t cut trees that are in a wide portion of the railway right-of-way just because they happen to be in the right-of-way; and if the right-of-way was too narrow they would widen it by taking land from the park. So the existing right-of-way is irrelevant to the question of just exactly how many trees they really had to remove. What was said makes no sense, and undermines my default belief in the correctness of their thinking.