ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I personally think that Victoria North/Highland would be better served by installing BRT corridors with proper traffic signal priority measures than by adding LRT. I'm no traffic planner, but I think the benefits that could be achieved by moving our buses more efficiently along these corridors would be more meaningful than losing right-of-way space to an LRT and squishing the local bus routes into the remaining single lane with personal vehicles. Then maybe after 50-75 years or so, we could revisit the corridor and install a raised platform for an LRT or equivalent if necessitated.

Of course, this is (probably) moot until the new highway 7 is installed. I can't see the Region giving up road space in this corridor to transit projects until that happens. In the short term, I think the priority should be to efficiently move buses through the congested stretch of Victoria, in and out of the transit terminal once it's built.

If you want efficiency then you want an LRT instead of a BRT. The only place that BRTs make sense is routes where you know it's going to take a route a really, really long time to get over that tipping point where LRTs become cheaper per passenger ride than BRTs.

In the fall of 2019 after ION started running with it's 25,000 average weekday riders was running at (by my calculations dividing operating costs by known ridership) $3.10/ride compared to the GRT bus average of $4.75/ride.

BRT is basically just buses. If we used BRT sensibly, BRT would have advantages like buses.

E.g., in our congested core, we built dedicated bus lanes to ensure buses moved swiftly past traffic, but then had the flexibility in the periphery to serve many routes.

The way we ACTUALLY do BRT is backwards, we build BRT lanes in the periphery where they don't really help much, but reduce flexibility, then force buses to share traffic in the congested core.

A pessimal policy....

LRT is good because it forces us not be pessimal.

[ac3r]

For me the Victoria / Highland should be the next stage 3...  This route would service the transit hub as well.  If it ended at the Boardwalk, then the next natural progression would be that Waterloo route.

204  pre-pandemic was stagnated at roughly 2,250 weekday riders on average since at least 2016, maybe before, so no where near needing an LRT. Also, it was the only existing iXpress route that did not a see a bump in ridership when LRT service started in 2019.

Given that both Highland and Victoria terminate well south of the south end of the Boardwalk, I'm not sure that the Victoria/Highland route is the best one to get LRT access to The Boardwalk. The King/University/Erb route at least terminates at the north end of The Boardwalk, even i fthat isn't ideal.

Not turning onto Erb and just continuing down University Ave W to Ira Needles would get you to a central part of The Boardwalk, but there's that big gap ith no good destinations from Erb to Fischer-Hallman.

Unless one could build both Victoria/Highland and King/University/Erb routes and connect their tails via Ira Needles?

You're looking at it the wrong way. Passenger numbers was only half the reason why we built the LRT. The other half was because it's a great catalyst for transit oriented development. You can't just look at raw data of the present and form opinions or draw conclusions as that's flawed, especially when it comes to planning. Half the bus routes in the city wouldn't exist if we were just talking ridership numbers to justify them.

While this isn't a great comparison, take a video game like City Skylines...or anything capable of modeling. Plop down a rapid transit system in an area, adjust zoning and watch how fast the areas around the stations grow. If the region had unlimited money and built a bunch of light rail or subway lines around the city, you'd see previously stagnant areas suddenly flourish. The 204 may not have the highest ridership, but if we replaced it with rapid transit you'd see more people taking transit and you'd see more development around it (which means even higher ridership).

In planning, you have to consider the future, not just the present.

[ac3r]

For me the Victoria / Highland should be the next stage 3...  This route would service the transit hub as well.  If it ended at the Boardwalk, then the next natural progression would be that Waterloo route.

This is what I'd like to see as well. It could even extend out to Breslau one day. And if I had a blank chequebook, I'd have a terminus built at the airport. I mean what good is an international airport without transit connections?

I've suggested that to a friend in my line of work and got called crazy haha. But then one week we were both in Germany. We took a trip to Nürnberg for something. They're a city with roughly the same makeup as us. It has a similar population, has two neighbouring cities connected to it (Fürth and Erlangen) and yet they have 3 subway lines, streetcars, a few S-Bahn lines and plenty of buses. A few years back they extended one of the subway lines to their international airport and it has been an incredibly useful tool to help grow the city and get people around.

With airlines interested in our airport for a multitude of reasons, we ought to invest in a good transit connection to it. I know there's a suggestion for Metrolink to have a little extension to it from the future Breslau station, but with the pace they operate at I think we'd be waiting for decades. We need something to go to our airport...even if it's just an express bus.

[Bytor]

You're looking at it the wrong way. Passenger numbers was only half the reason why we built the LRT. The other half was because it's a great catalyst for transit oriented development.

I know that was one of the considerations, I've never said it wasn't. However, you don't just build LRTs willy-nilly because you want "catalyse" something. You have to look a ridership, too.

You can't just look at raw data of the present and form opinions or draw conclusions as that's flawed, especially when it comes to planning. Half the bus routes in the city wouldn't exist if we were just talking ridership numbers to justify them.

Except I didn't just look at the "raw data of the present". I pointed out trending over several years. I pointed out the route's lack of change in a scenario where one would have rightfully expected it.

Those are exactly the type of things you do in planning.

In planning, you have to consider the future, not just the present.

You use the data about the past to inform your projections about the future.

[Bytor]

I personally think that Victoria North/Highland would be better served by installing BRT corridors with proper traffic signal priority measures than by adding LRT. I'm no traffic planner, but I think the benefits that could be achieved by moving our buses more efficiently along these corridors would be more meaningful than losing right-of-way space to an LRT and squishing the local bus routes into the remaining single lane with personal vehicles. Then maybe after 50-75 years or so, we could revisit the corridor and install a raised platform for an LRT or equivalent if necessitated.

Of course, this is (probably) moot until the new highway 7 is installed. I can't see the Region giving up road space in this corridor to transit projects until that happens. In the short term, I think the priority should be to efficiently move buses through the congested stretch of Victoria, in and out of the transit terminal once it's built.

Contrary to the beliefs of regional engineers there is no reason that a bus cannot use an LRT right of way. Many many cities do this.

This only works if you're only using the tram right of way for a couple of blocks in between stops. It gets dicey, though the shorter your tram headways gets or the longer the bus uses the tracks, for basically the same reasons that bus bunch becomes a progressively bigger problem as bus headways drop below the 10 minute mark.

An example of where it could help is if the 204 had no stops downtown and just used the tracks to do it's zig-zag from Victoria St N over to Queen to get to Highland. However, as anybody who has ever been on am iXpress bus knows, if there is a car crash along it's route, or if it has snowed more than a little bit, even if it's *scheduled* to use the track 1 minute after the tram went past, it's highly likely that it's going to get in the way of next tram 9 minutes later. And given that those tracks are not plowed they'd probably make the bus even slower than if it used the road instead.

In general, it's just not a good idea.

BTW, which ones are these "many. many cities"?

[ijmorlan]

Contrary to the beliefs of regional engineers there is no reason that a bus cannot use an LRT right of way. Many many cities do this.

An example of where it could help is if the 204 had no stops downtown and just used the tracks to do it's zig-zag from Victoria St N over to Queen to get to Highland. However, as anybody who has ever been on am iXpress bus knows, if there is a car crash along it's route, or if it has snowed more than a little bit, even if it's *scheduled* to use the track 1 minute after the tram went past, it's highly likely that it's going to get in the way of next tram 9 minutes later. And given that those tracks are not plowed they'd probably make the bus even slower than if it used the road instead.

I don’t know how many places do this, but at 2:09 in this video there is an enclosed LRT station I understand has embedded track so that buses can also use the space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZaRfNjTPx8

Although I can’t actually find the evidence (cite) that the reason for the embedded track is so buses can use it. Hard to see why else however — it seems like it should always be cheaper to use non-embedded track than embedded.

[Bytor]

An example of where it could help is if the 204 had no stops downtown and just used the tracks to do it's zig-zag from Victoria St N over to Queen to get to Highland. However, as anybody who has ever been on am iXpress bus knows, if there is a car crash along it's route, or if it has snowed more than a little bit, even if it's *scheduled* to use the track 1 minute after the tram went past, it's highly likely that it's going to get in the way of next tram 9 minutes later. And given that those tracks are not plowed they'd probably make the bus even slower than if it used the road instead.

I don’t know how many places do this, but at 2:09 in this video there is an enclosed LRT station I understand has embedded track so that buses can also use the space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZaRfNjTPx8

Although I can’t actually find the evidence (cite) that the reason for the embedded track is so buses can use it. Hard to see why else however — it seems like it should always be cheaper to use non-embedded track than embedded.

That's Westlake Station on Seattle SoundLink's Line 1. It was part of bus tunnel that was completed in 1990. It was closed from 2005-2009 to be renovated for light rail. Busses continued to use it until 2019, though at progressively reduced amounts as LRT services increased.

[danbrotherston]

I don’t know how many places do this, but at 2:09 in this video there is an enclosed LRT station I understand has embedded track so that buses can also use the space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZaRfNjTPx8

Although I can’t actually find the evidence (cite) that the reason for the embedded track is so buses can use it. Hard to see why else however — it seems like it should always be cheaper to use non-embedded track than embedded.

That's Westlake Station on Seattle SoundLink's Line 1. It was part of bus tunnel that was completed in 1990. It was closed from 2005-2009 to be renovated for light rail. Busses continued to use it until 2019, though at progressively reduced amounts as LRT services increased.

Yes, that was one example I would have given, I believe Boston also had a similar situation at one point.

Plus there are many European cities which have transit plazas which include both buses and LRT.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a cost to this, and transit vehicles can bunch. Stopping can be managed however, by having space for passing at any given stop, all actual BRT systems I'm aware of do this.

And yes, if we're talking about a short segment (say for example Duke St. from Frederick to Francis....just a random example) it's entirely feasible.

[ijmorlan]

That's Westlake Station on Seattle SoundLink's Line 1. It was part of bus tunnel that was completed in 1990. It was closed from 2005-2009 to be renovated for light rail. Busses continued to use it until 2019, though at progressively reduced amounts as LRT services increased.

Thanks!

I could also have mentioned Calgary’s downtown transit mall. That one is interesting because the rail vehicles are actually high-floor with high platforms; except for the location of the power pickup (overhead rather than 3rd rail), it’s not really that different from having a section of the Toronto subway sharing space with buses.

[jamincan]

What do people think of some sort of LRT or BRT along Highland vs. along Victoria vs. on the CN/GO rail corridor? On the one hand, the CN/GO rail corridor is mostly grade separated (exceptions are Strange/Park/Duke/Lancaster/Lackner) and from King St. east, it is also double-tracked until just before Lackner. On the other hand, it's further away from the commercial strips which seem to be centred on Highland.

[danbrotherston]

What do people think of some sort of LRT or BRT along Highland vs. along Victoria vs. on the CN/GO rail corridor? On the one hand, the CN/GO rail corridor is mostly grade separated (exceptions are Strange/Park/Duke/Lancaster/Lackner) and from King St. east, it is also double-tracked until just before Lackner. On the other hand, it's further away from the commercial strips which seem to be centred on Highland.

I don't think the GO/CN rail corridor would help much. In order to LRT it would almost certainly need to be triple tracked (sharing with one night freight train a week works OK, but this is a heavy rail line that carries a couple trains a day and--hopefully--increasing). I doubt triple tracks would fit under most of the existing grade separations, meaning, they'd need to be rebuilt anyway. Location wise, I suspect it's worse than the other locations, but probably not by enough to really kill the idea more than just the problematic logistics.

If we are just talking about the segment WEST of King, there is a third option, which would be the Greenway/Drainage ditch which runs between Victoria and Highland. And for that...I have a dream...a Wuppertal dream. Or at least, I'm thinking of some elevated, but cheap, extremely high frequency but relatively low capacity system strung above that section visiting locations all the way out west.

There is a significant amount of lower income, high density housing, along with a lot of commercial/retail (and lots of empty parking for redevelopment). I think an experiment with a high frequency/low capacity high order transit would be interesting there.

But it's probably silly, we can do the same thing with buses or LRT....and just accept lower frequencies.

[kps]

I could also have mentioned Calgary’s downtown transit mall. That one is interesting because the rail vehicles are actually high-floor with high platforms; except for the location of the power pickup (overhead rather than 3rd rail), it’s not really that different from having a section of the Toronto subway sharing space with buses.

It's interesting how much platforms affect perception. Calgary has a ‘surface subway’, but substantially the same vehicles (Siemens U2A/SD-1x0) in other cities are plainly just streetcars.

[plam]

That's Westlake Station on Seattle SoundLink's Line 1. It was part of bus tunnel that was completed in 1990. It was closed from 2005-2009 to be renovated for light rail. Busses continued to use it until 2019, though at progressively reduced amounts as LRT services increased.

Yes, that was one example I would have given, I believe Boston also had a similar situation at one point.

Plus there are many European cities which have transit plazas which include both buses and LRT.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a cost to this, and transit vehicles can bunch. Stopping can be managed however, by having space for passing at any given stop, all actual BRT systems I'm aware of do this.

And yes, if we're talking about a short segment (say for example Duke St. from Frederick to Francis....just a random example) it's entirely feasible.

Yeah, Seattle definitely has that. Pretty weird to see a train and then a bus. I do not think Boston did this. The Silver Line looks like it should be rail but is actually bus, and it's super slow, and there's switching time from electric to diesel along the line. Not my favourite.

[danbrotherston]

Yes, that was one example I would have given, I believe Boston also had a similar situation at one point.

Plus there are many European cities which have transit plazas which include both buses and LRT.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a cost to this, and transit vehicles can bunch. Stopping can be managed however, by having space for passing at any given stop, all actual BRT systems I'm aware of do this.

And yes, if we're talking about a short segment (say for example Duke St. from Frederick to Francis....just a random example) it's entirely feasible.

Yeah, Seattle definitely has that. Pretty weird to see a train and then a bus. I do not think Boston did this. The Silver Line looks like it should be rail but is actually bus, and it's super slow, and there's switching time from electric to diesel along the line. Not my favourite.

Yeah, I've ridden the silver line. I thought it ran along their tram line, I thought it ran with the green line for a portion, but probably I am confusing it with Seattle then.

In any case, there is also San Francisco which runs a bus/tram line down market street...since they removed cars anyway.

[nms]

The GO/CN Corridor would be a better fit for better heavy passenger rail connections west of Waterloo. Given that Baden & New Hamburg are the next targets for development, it would be an easy win to connect those villages with Waterloo and Kitchener by rail. A Boardwalk station (and perhaps ones at Fisher-Hallman and/or Westmount) would be an added bonus. Just for fun, the eastern end could stop at Breslau and drop down to the airport. Since the Region owns land at the dump and at the airport, either location could work as a service site for the heavy rail vehicles (or for, that matter, the empty rail yards in Baden or New Hamburg)