ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[MidTowner]

Markster has a good thread highlighting all of the access issues at the stations.

One that I can't believe I wouldn't have thought of, but know I would never have: Northfield can only be accessed from the north end, and is fenced in to the south. If you are accosted on the platform (which obviously is unlikely, but possible), there is no escape route. I guess that sort of thing is a blind spot for me; it never would have occurred to me.

Anyway, some good points about various stations.

[ijmorlan]

Markster has a good thread highlighting all of the access issues at the stations.

One that I can't believe I wouldn't have thought of, but know I would never have: Northfield can only be accessed from the north end, and is fenced in to the south. If you are accosted on the platform (which obviously is unlikely, but possible), there is no escape route. I guess that sort of thing is a blind spot for me; it never would have occurred to me.

Anyway, some good points about various stations.

I believe the path on the east side of the tracks is the official second exit — cross the tracks at the south end of the platform, walk up the path. There is a similar arrangement at Mill. But obviously, in the situation you are talking about, this form of second exit doesn’t really do the job.

There should be crossings to the west, directly into the Northfield Station development, at both ends of the platform. That would be convenient for people using that location and would also provide a real second exit.

[MidTowner]

I believe the path on the east side of the tracks is the official second exit — cross the tracks at the south end of the platform, walk up the path. There is a similar arrangement at Mill. But obviously, in the situation you are talking about, this form of second exit doesn’t really do the job.

There should be crossings to the west, directly into the Northfield Station development, at both ends of the platform. That would be convenient for people using that location and would also provide a real second exit.

You're right, there should be.

All stations should have had four exits, two at each ends of the platform. Obviously this isn't possible everywhere, but the exceptions should have been exceptional, for clear reasons. Many stations lack one or more exits, which suggests that access simply wasn't a priority.

I wonder if there was a specific reason at Northfield why there was not an exit at the south end of the platform into the "Northfield Crossing" building (owned by Zehr Group). I wouldn't be surprised if the project team ruled it out simply because it was private property, without consulting the property owner.

[creative]

Waterloo Region has paid GrandLinq $570 million for Ion
https://www.therecord.com/news-story/949...n-for-ion/

[ijmorlan]

But that's the problem -- people not stopping fully and then checking are creating accidents. Stoping and checking requires you to use your brain, slowing and simply checking doesn't work the same way.

People not checking are creating accidents. People are perfectly capable of stopping, and not checking. Obsessing over whether or not there was a moment in time when the velocity of their car relative to the ground was 0 is counterproductive.

[ijmorlan]

Specifically with Grand River Hospital, I thought it would be a lot of people doing this, but at least from what I've seen it doesn't seem to be. Possibly just a matter of where people's destinations tend to be.

Yes, I think at GRH the actual number of people doing that will be low. However, since no additional construction would be needed to allow a north-end access (just a different configuration of curbs), it should have been done, no matter how low the expected demand.

[creative]

I thought that this was the Ion thread, not the failing to stop at stop signs thread!

[ijmorlan]

That part I can abide less. There is a button-activated crosswalk, people should call for it and wait for it to be activated, not jay walk. But I can understand it, because they want to get to the north side and there is an arm keeping them on the track side, and away from the button.

I'm not sure why there need to be arms blocking the sidewalk- the Spur Line certainly doesn't have that elsewhere, and nor do other Ion crossings.

All the gate-controlled intersections have arms blocking the sidewalk. Can you think of a counter-example?

[MidTowner]

Sorry, what I meant was that there are plenty of crossings (more than "plenty") which are not gate-controlled.

Why must there be a gate blocking the sidewalk, particularly the small gate blocking only the sidewalk on the east side (I can't think of one of those used elsewhere on the line), and particularly when people are going to be on the track side of the gate disembarking the train? That makes no sense to me.

[MidTowner]

Yes, I think at GRH the actual number of people doing that will be low. However, since no additional construction would be needed to allow a north-end access (just a different configuration of curbs), it should have been done, no matter how low the expected demand.

Yep, you're right about this, it should have. And I suspect that not doing it had nothing to do with expected demand. I would bet that wasn't a consideration at all, given the number of stations where this was the practice.

[Pilsner]

Fix for EasyGo fare card glitch being tested

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/949...ng-tested/

[boatracer]

I'm really tired of the use of the word "glitch" for every technological problem that occurs. I can't tell if it is just lazy reporting or that they think most people won't understand/don't care what the root cause of the problem is. As more and more of our lives is a direct interaction with technology (software, hardware, services) the explanation that something doesn't work as expected because of a glitch is less than helpful.

[timio]

How about "new version of software being tested, containing the following bugfixes..."

But not all of us live in the development realm...

[plam]

So I met with region staff at Willis Way. They pointed out the design challenges there: putting in the crosswalk at the north end of the platform wouldn't work great because the cars will bunch up from Erb and Caroline. My recollection of that conversation is that their predicted car behaviour is that the cars would just block the crosswalk. The PXO at the south end of Willis Way is there for accessibility reasons, but they expect that most able-bodied people would jaywalk midblock on Caroline to get to/leave the station, which is the behaviour that I've observed.

I found that the Region of Waterloo engineers are actually quite realistic with respect to human behaviour on roads; their focus is on reducing the number of people actually getting hit by cars (vs just following the rules).

We also looked at the cars turning west onto Erb from Caroline despite the prohibition ("NO LEFT TURN, BUSES EXCEPTED"). Usually it seems to be cars that are following buses.

They are also continuing to work on signal timing and reducing unnecessary arms-down time.

Not having a split stop would have been better (i.e. two-way traffic on King St) but that was driven by elected officials. Cambridge isn't getting split stops in their design.

[timc]

How about "new version of software being tested, containing the following bugfixes..."

But not all of us live in the development realm...

"Bug fixes and performance improvements".