ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

Are the turns with non-ridiculous speed limits in Line-Of-Sight (LOS) areas? I have no idea, I’m just wondering if that might be the difference.

It doesn’t really matter, because even if there is a reason that means they can’t just simply fix it, it still doesn’t justify it, because it is ridiculous for the train to have to go as slow as it does. This is similar to the O-Train “can’t operate with doors open even in an emergency without going back to 1800s scheduling technology” problem; regardless of the technical details, it’s ridiculous that they have such a problem. In both cases, whatever the detailed technical explanation, it just means the designers screwed up earlier in the process.

I'm thinking of the turn from Waterloo Park onto Caroline Rd. it's also moving from an ATP section to an on road section, now, the speed restriction is higher because it is a wider turn, but the speed restriction doesn't start hundreds of meters (yes, hundreds, I measured) away from the intersection as it does at Hayward.

Thanks for the example. That one had a slow area ahead of it at the switch for a while, but it seems to have been fixed and I agree it’s much more reasonable — it still looks pretty slow, but the slowness has some connection to the conditions we can observe. I have no idea whether the fact that the turn itself is in the LOS area affects how they handle it.

I will also take this opportunity to once again argue that the LRT should have continued along the freight railway, to a grade separated station at Block Line, then turned towards the hydro corridor between the car dealership and the mattress place. While they were at it, they could have built segregated bike lanes and a sidewalk on Courtland, as well as a trail from Block line to Balzer Rd, as well as connecting to the back of the towers on Fallowfield cutting 600 meters off their walk to the LRT station.

That does sound like a good idea — eliminate the jog at Hayward (with its 2 sharp turns), not to mention the crossings associated with Graybar and the pedestrian crossing at the corner with Courtland, as well as the crossing at Blockline and the crossings associated with the businesses between Courtland and the tracks. And eventually the station could essentially be in the Virerra Village basement, which would be really slick!