10-12-2017, 10:47 AM
(10-12-2017, 10:22 AM)Markster Wrote: An article in the Kitchener Post commenting on the absurd station locations in Waterloo:
https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...d-to-fail/
Quote:I had a dream that the LRT was up and running. I took the 202 iXpress from The Boardwalk to the University Avenue LRT station, a transit hub occupying part of what had been UW parking lot A. Walking a few metres to the LRT, I saw students boarding the waiting GO, Greyhound, and GRT buses.
The southern part of UW's main campus and thousands of highrise units between Seagram Drive and Hickory Street were well served by this station.
The train quickly took me to the Columbia Street LRT station, which connected with the 201 iXpress and other GRT buses. This station served the northern part of UW's main campus and thousands of highrise units along Columbia Street.
A few minutes later I disembarked at the Albert-McCormick LRT station to return my library books. Not far away were the Albert and Bearinger strip malls, and even closer was the Lakeshore neighbourhood, the low-rise housing soon to be intensified by mixed-income family highrises.
Wonderful, but as I said, it was only a dream.
And there's a bit more after that you can read at the link.
It's certainly not wrong about how the locations for stations are woefully poorly placed from a connectivity perspective.
TriTAG was already harping on this point in 2012, back when there was the slim possibility of getting things changed, but political buy-in from the universities seemed pegged to the absurd station locations.
To play a very tiny amount of devils advocate. The station locations are probably better for those who aren't on connecting buses. I.e., visiting the park is easier with the location of the park station, and visiting campus, or getting on the train from living nearby (Phillip St., and hopefully with a connector through to Hickory and Lester).
Still, network wise, it seems like a bad choice. It *could* be mitigated if the region/GRT/University was willing to put up the cash and land and political will to build direct access roads, with full transit priority instead of meandering down Ring Rd. But that isn't going to happen either.