ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[neonjoe]

I like the look, and wondered that myself. My only guess that winter maintenance may have cause too much harm? I mean, at least to ION officials. Linz has about 61 cm of snow per year. So it's not like it's snow free. But perhaps their warmer winter climate may make snow removal easier.

Snow removal is not normally required on railways except for exceptionally snowy areas or areas with extensive drifting or avalanches. I’m pretty sure the local freight railways around here are never plowed. Embedded track is different; I’m not entirely clear how different. Up to a point it should still be possible for the LRVs to push aside snow, but if the flangeway ices up you can get derailments and it’s possible deep snow would be a problem. But unless emergency vehicles (or other traffic, but that doesn’t apply to our system outside of intersections) really are using the track area embedding isn’t required anyhow so who knows.

Perhaps for Ambulances or other emergency vehicles. They are permitted to hop the curb and use the LRT ROW to bypass traffic for emergency situations.
https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...aring.html

Police cars, ambulances and fire trucks can mount the curbs that separate light rail tracks from the road in some areas where streets are too narrow for vehicles to pull over and let emergency vehicles pass.