ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I doubt the "1970s-era technologies" given that they are able to integrate with Miovision.

The ground-loop and strobe light sensors have not changed much since the 1970s. All they do is raise voltage on a circuit, and I'd be very surprised if Myovision controller-brains could not interface with older installations like that. After all, who'd buy them if you had to replace your city's entire traffic sensor grid to take advance of better CPUs and programing because Myovision used a new/proprietary connection type? That would have killed their chances at establishing a foothold in the market as the places most likely to upgrade are the ones with older equipment approaching the end of the lifecycle.

However, my point was that the current traffic control systems in our fair Region are out-of-date and have been so for a while, and simply unable to do the more complex tasks like one regularly finds in use elsewhere on the planet. If I'm wrong about that and they can do more, why haven't the Region and the Cities bothered to do something different with the intersections mentioned previous where even non LRT conflicting paths are made to stop? Many of them are not under Transport Canada rail guidelines (which can admittedly be stupid), so why require every path to stop when you can still keep some of the paths moving and not block traffic?

I would check the Transport Canada grade crossing regulations first.

Except many of the LRT intersections have nothing to do with Transport Canada Regulations. Take Borden & Charles. Totally shuts down the intersection when a tram leaves the station southbound even though there are non-conflicting paths, like left from Charles to Borden following the tram, straight through on Charles the opposite direction of the tram, turning right from Borden on to Charles around the Tim Hortons corner, and 2 of the 4 pedestrian crossings. That's not the only intersection where that type of things happens.

If the problem is not that of dated, inadequate signal controller equipment incapable of more than simple patterns, then the entire traffic engineering staff needs to be fired.

Because in addition to prioritizing vehicles above all else, they are also aggressively conservative.

While I probably wouldn't say something that extreme, I strongly agree with the sentiment.