ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[KevinL]

Apparently today's activity is shuttling trains between the crossovers at Cameron and Green - so lots of downtown sightings to be had.

[Spokes]

I like that they're making testing more "realistic" in terms of following the route with stops, etc

[kps]

506 has been sitting at King & Victoria all morning. Did somebody break it?

[trainspotter139]

Was downtown and saw that 502 had a bunch of people from Crosslinx on board today. Must be on a tour or something.

[KevinL]

Seeing the units in use, makes sense.

[danbrotherston]

[KevinL]

This also gives away the Ion's internal route number: 301.

[trainspotter139]

This also gives away the Ion's internal route number: 301.

The ION Bus from Fairway Station to Ainslie is 302. 

[ijmorlan]

They are starting to roll out ION replacement shuttle stops:

I was musing to myself that maybe they should have gone ahead with the bus route re-organization, just using the ION replacement shuttle route until the LRT is operational. Maybe last fall, in September 2018. Although I suppose the shuttle must take buses away from other routes so they couldn’t fully switch to the new route layout anyway.

[MidTowner]

Part of what irritated me about the various detours of the 200 is that GRT did not seem to see the obvious (to me) logic of trying to replicate Ion's eventual route, to build ridership. Some people will recall that, at one point, the 200 had no stops between Uptown and Downtown, even though Ion will have three.

I think that doing the bus re-organization early would have been a great thing. Maybe even scrapping the 200 early (to reallocate those buses, as will be done when Ion starts running), and running the shuttle, as you say.

The argument against would be the reason that was given to explain the 200's current detour: the 7 can apparently not share King Street with a rapid bus service.

[KevinT]

Ever wondered about those blue lights at the top corners of the ION LRVs?  Wonder no more:

Marshall's Musings: The story of Toronto’s streetcar “bull’s eyes”

With thanks to Chris Drew (at_chrisjamesdrew on Twitter) for the tweet/reblog that brought this article to my attention.

[trainspotter139]

[jeffster]

Ever wondered about those blue lights at the top corners of the ION LRVs?  Wonder no more:

Marshall's Musings: The story of Toronto’s streetcar “bull’s eyes”

With thanks to Chris Drew (at_chrisjamesdrew on Twitter) for the tweet/reblog that brought this article to my attention.

That's pretty cool. I always liked the blue lights on the TTC buses, and something that I missed from my time in Toronto and was happy to see it come to our LRT. Now we know the rest of the story!

[KevinL]

The French Ambassador was in the Region today touring the ION OMSF

If anyone's asking 'why France', Keolis (the operating branch of GrandLinq) is part owned by the French national railway.

[panamaniac]