10-12-2017, 11:15 AM
(10-12-2017, 10:22 AM)Markster Wrote: An article in the Kitchener Post commenting on the absurd station locations in Waterloo:
https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...d-to-fail/
Quote:I had a dream that the LRT was up and running. I took the 202 iXpress from The Boardwalk to the University Avenue LRT station, a transit hub occupying part of what had been UW parking lot A. Walking a few metres to the LRT, I saw students boarding the waiting GO, Greyhound, and GRT buses.
The southern part of UW's main campus and thousands of highrise units between Seagram Drive and Hickory Street were well served by this station.
The train quickly took me to the Columbia Street LRT station, which connected with the 201 iXpress and other GRT buses. This station served the northern part of UW's main campus and thousands of highrise units along Columbia Street.
A few minutes later I disembarked at the Albert-McCormick LRT station to return my library books. Not far away were the Albert and Bearinger strip malls, and even closer was the Lakeshore neighbourhood, the low-rise housing soon to be intensified by mixed-income family highrises.
Wonderful, but as I said, it was only a dream.
And there's a bit more after that you can read at the link.
It's certainly not wrong about how the locations for stations are woefully poorly placed from a connectivity perspective.
TriTAG was already harping on this point in 2012, back when there was the slim possibility of getting things changed, but political buy-in from the universities seemed pegged to the absurd station locations.
Which is weird, because what political buy-in was needed from the universities?
Although I have to say that the characterization of Seagram stop as being a park and the stadium only is unfair. It is also the Laurier stop, and Laurier isn’t even particular far from the stop — the whole campus is within the same distance of the stop as UW south campus. It’s just that none of Laurier’s campus is even closer to the stop, it’s all near the distance in question.
I was thinking it would be cool if there was an LRT shuttle — just back and forth between UW station (providing cross-platform transfer with the main route) and a station in the middle of Laurier. Just a single track, one vehicle going back and forth, both giving Laurier a convenient LRT stop and linking the two universities. I wouldn’t want to drive that route however. I can’t imagine a more boring driving job.