ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

They were restricted by the geometry of the site in each case, particularly at Conestoga. A centre platform would mean the tracks are farther apart, and thus the leading crossover has to be longer in turn. They couldn't fit this into the property and architecture they had to work with.

I am sure there were trade offs to be made for all stations on the line. The frustrating thing is that passenger convenience and access seem to be a very low priority compared with cost, and motorist convenience when hard choices had to be made. 

Hopefully some of these can be fixed over time but central platforms isn't likely one of them.

At Fairway the platforms will be fixed by the Cambridge extension. Once it’s not a terminus the problem will go away.

At Conestoga they should just use a single platform except for unusual situations.

Also, they need to do whatever is required to ensure that the announcements are always correct, which would help with the platform situation regardless of the actual operations. On Friday I saw a Conestoga-bound LRV signed for Fairway, which made me wonder what the stop announcements were doing inside, and also makes me wonder just how much scope for manual error there is. Shouldn’t the LRV know what trip it is and therefore what the destination sign should be showing?

On a related note, I’ve complained before about how crossing protection immediately past a stop activates as a train arrives at the stop, and there has been some discussion about why this might be needed — in case of overrun, etc. I’ve observed operations at Conestoga Mall which invalidate any conceivable justification for pre-activating the crossing protection (other than, of course, being required to follow “safety” rules arbitrarily imposed from above): twice I have arrived at the Mall with an LRV parked at the very end of the track, past the part of the platform which is currently used for passenger loading. My LRV simply drove in on the same track and stopped no more than a couple of metres short of touching the other LRV. If this is something they can do in service with passengers, then they clearly feel that they can stop reliably in the station, and it should be no problem if what is immediately past the station is not a parked LRV but instead a crossing.