ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

The current state of opposition to Phase 2, straight from the head of "Stop the LRT Thru Preston". They still claim the proposed route would "destroy" up to 100 properties in Preston, and they're now teaming up with residents of several Kitchener neighbourhoods in attempt to keep the route off King St and Shantz Hill as well. They still want the region to go with their alternate route to nowhere up Highway 8 and the 401.

Bring 'a strong voice' against LRT route

[highlander]

Well at least she got one thing right:

It is imperative that you attend one of these meetings. You need to give the region your comments.

[ijmorlan]

They still claim the proposed route would "destroy" up to 100 properties in Preston…

I’m not completely up to speed on all details, but isn’t that an actual lie? My understanding is that very few, certainly not 100, properties are needed in full — in most cases it’s just a narrow strip along the road that wouldn’t even hit the news if it was a road widening project.

[Viewfromthe42]

It's the strategy of filling the void. We know enough to know that to run the route as proposed, there would be *some* effect on 100 properties. But until we do the work of designing the route, we don't know exactly how much they would be affected by (because we won't do detailed work on all umpteen different route possibilities). So into the void, this group launches your worst fears, that 100 homes will be destroyed.

[trainspotter139]

PCC 4 Docs are up: http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/...ackage.pdf http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/...Boards.pdf

Survey for PCC 4: https://www.opentownhall.com/portals/274/Issue_6211

[KevinL]

So here's the meatiest bit:



The red line is the preferred option. Avoiding conflicts in the Eagle-south-of-King area by hugging the Speed shoreline and cutting across the Chopin/Queenston block with an off-street station. Will be more costly and have more natural impacts, but everything else is said to work better.

[bgb_ca]

Now to sit back and watch all the NIMBYs reject them all.

[ijmorlan]

Now to sit back and watch all the NIMBYs reject them all.

We just need to get Rob “Subways, subways, subways!” Ford up to Cambridge to assist them.

[mgregorasz]

Now to sit back and watch all the NIMBYs reject them all.

I can see Cambridge council passing a motion to reject this latest route

[timc]

I saw this in The Record, including an artist's impression of the crossing at Shantz Hill.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/857...le-street/

Schmidt said the impact on the intersection will be relatively small. Light rail trains are not like emergency vehicles, which automatically trigger a traffic light change to proceed through an intersection.

Trains may modify a light if running a bit behind schedule, either extending a green light or shortening a red light.

"It's more of a slight modification rather than a hard stop each time the train comes," Schmidt said. "It's designed to work with the network."

That doesn't seem to be how I've heard it described in the past. I thought trains were going to get a higher priority.

[Canard]

We’ll have to see. The Keolis folks at the last OMSF Open House were adamant that trains would never hit a red light.

I suspect the reality will be somewhere between Keolis’ description and the very passive “we don’t want to anger drivers” comments by the Regional staff.

[Canard]

The article says the new route avoids the need for a new bridge. How will the route get across the river though?

[ijmorlan]

The article says the new route avoids the need for a new bridge. How will the route get across the river though?

It says that the new route “avoids building an extra bridge”. Unfortunately I don’t see which bridge they mean — it has to cross both the Grand and the Speed. It says something about an elevated section — maybe the elevated section also crosses the Speed river? But having a longer elevated section isn’t exactly avoiding building a bridge.

I’m pretty sure all the plans involve a new dedicated bridge to cross the Grand.

Typical vague article.

[timc]

It's talking specifically about the area around Freeport. Was there a plan to build the LRT over top of Highway 8? I assume it would have been built under, so probably not.

[KevinL]

The Freeport proposal included a new bridge for both the LRT and King Street - the new proposal would be a narrower bridge for just LRT. So the same total number of bridges, but much less complex.

By the way, the artist's impression of the Shantz Hill bridge can be seen on page 19 of the presentation boards, including a second angle.